"No, no, no! I'll carry it myself," returned Miss Wren. "I'm awfully lop-sided, you know, and stowed down in my pocket, it'll trim the ship. To let you into a secret, godmother, I wear my pocket on my high side o' purpose." With that they began their plodding through the fog. "Yes, it was truly sharp of you, godmother," returned Miss Wren, with great approbation, "to understand me. But, you see, you _are_ so like the fairy godmother in the bright little books! You look so unlike the rest of the people, and so much as if you had changed yourself into that shape, just this moment, with some benevolent object. Bah!" cried Miss Jenny, putting her face close to the old man's, "I can see your features, godmother, behind the beard." "Does the fancy go to my changing other objects, too, Jenny?" "Ah! That it does! If you'd only borrow my stick, and tap this piece of pavement, it would start up a coach and six. I say,--Let's believe so!" "With all my heart," replied the good old man. "And I'll tell you what I must ask you to do, godmother. I must ask you to be so kind as to give my child a tap, and change him altogether. Oh, my child has been such a bad, bad child of late! It worries me almost out of my wits. Not done a stroke of work these ten days." "What shall be changed after him?" asked Riah, in a compassionately playful voice. "Upon my word, godmother, I am afraid I must be selfish next, and get you to set me right in the back and legs. It's a little thing to you with your power, godmother, but it's a great deal to poor, weak, aching me." There was no querulous complaining in the words, but they were not the less touching for that. "And then?" "Yes, and then--_you_ know, godmother. Well both jump into the coach and six, and go to Lizzie. This reminds me, godmother, to ask you a serious question. You are as wise as wise can be (having been brought up by the fairies), and you can tell me this,--Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?" "Explain, goddaughter." "I feel so much more solitary and helpless without Lizzie now than I used to feel before I knew her." (Tears were in her eyes as she said so.) "Some beloved companionship fades out of most lives, my dear," said the Jew, "that of a wife, and a fair daughter, and a son of promise, has faded out of my own life--but the happiness _was_" "Ah!" said Miss Wren thoughtfully, by no means convinced. "Then I tell you what change I think you had better begin with, godmother. You had better change Is into Was, and Was into Is, and keep them so." "Would that suit your case? Would you not be always in pain then?" asked the old man tenderly. "Right!" exclaimed Miss Wren. "You have changed me wiser, godmother. Not," she added, with a quaint hitch of her chin and eyes, "that you need to be a very wonderful godmother to do that, indeed!"