`` Thank you , ma'am , '' said Tom . `` Then I wo n't trouble your ladyship any more ; I hear you are very busy . '' `` I am never more busy than I am now , '' she said , without stirring a finger . `` I heard , ma'am , that you were always making new beasts out of old . '' `` So people fancy . But I am not going to trouble myself to make things , my little dear . I sit here and make them make themselves . '' `` You are a clever fairy , indeed , '' thought Tom . And he was quite right . That is a grand trick of good old Mother Carey 's , and a grand answer , which she has had occasion to make several times to impertinent people . There was once , for instance , a fairy who was so clever that she found out how to make butterflies . I do n't mean sham ones ; no : but real live ones , which would fly , and eat , and lay eggs , and do everything that they ought ; and she was so proud of her skill that she went flying straight off to the North Pole , to boast to Mother Carey how she could make butterflies . But Mother Carey laughed . `` Know , silly child , '' she said , `` that any one can make things , if they will take time and trouble enough : but it is not every one who , like me , can make things make themselves . '' But people do not yet believe that Mother Carey is as clever as all that comes to ; and they will not till they , too , go the journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere . `` And now , my pretty little man , '' said Mother Carey , `` you are sure you know the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere ? '' Tom thought ; and behold , he had forgotten it utterly . `` That is because you took your eyes off me . '' Tom looked at her again , and recollected ; and then looked away , and forgot in an instant . `` But what am I to do , ma'am ?
For I ca n't keep looking XXXXX you when I am somewhere else . ''
as at because for in like of than till to