What Rosamond was never told, and what she could not reasonably have been expected to deduce, was that the beautiful purple colour was not in the glass. A child cannot forgive injustice; all Rosamond’s friends (and all children are her friends) cry out that it “wasn’t fair”. They all say, “She wouldn’t have chosen the jar if she had _known_”; and they are right. But the story goes on relentless. Rosamond, sweet and unquestioning, survives the whole painful experience and hopes at the end of it that she will be “wiser another time”; but the Perfect Parent has lost all the prestige she ever had with children. She lost it before her callous and unintelligent question, “Why should you cry, my dear?” But that sealed her fate.