She called out to the skaters to ask them if they would look into her glass. “Hand it here,” answered one, who in the ice appeared very pale, thin, and respectable. “I am a philosopher; I am not afraid of the truth.” He looked in, and lo, there was a stork, standing on one leg, with his eyes half closed, and his head neatly tucked under his wing. “What a caricature!” he exclaimed, giving the glass a toss. It fell upon the ermine muff of a furbelowed old dowager, who was skating bravely about, notwithstanding her seventy years. “I will see how I look,” she said, with a simpering smile; and behold, there was a puffy white owl in the mirror. Down fell the glass, but Rosamond caught and saved it. “What a little unfledged thing you are, to be carrying that bit of broken glass about with you!” called out the philosopher. “Better be unfledged than a one-eyed stork,” answered Rosamond, and skated swiftly out of sight. Now, the grandest skater of all was a griffin, who led all the others, skating more skilfully than any of them, and flitting like mad across the very thinnest places. It made one's head giddy to see him. His swiftness and dexterity, and a knack he had of knocking the other skaters into great black holes under the ice, whenever they crossed his path, greatly imposed upon them, and they all took care to follow straight behind, or to keep well out of his way. Now and then a bear would growl as he glided by; but the next day, Rosamond would see that bear hard at work building ice palaces, too busy to growl. One day, skating off into a corner, she found the griffin sitting apart, behind a great block of ice with his claws crossed, and looking very cold and dreary, like a snow image. “Would you not like to take a peep into my glass?” she said to him, quite amiably. “No, child,” solemnly answered the griffin. “I know by your ironical smile that you have discovered the truth--that I am nothing but a griffin. But if the skaters believe in me, why undeceive them? Why should magpies and zebras have any thing better to reign over them?” “But do you not see how thin the ice is? You will surely break through some day.” “I know it,” he replied. “A good strong trampling, and we are all scattered far and wide. But I keep the tigers and hyenas at work, and the more sagacious elephants bear their burdens in quiet, and let me alone. If there be a lion among them, he roars so gently it does no harm. And you must be a good girl, and keep silence. I see that you also wear a crown, and you know how heavy it is.”