"Yes," said the apple-woman; "but now I live here I don't care about anything so much as I used to do. 'May I have a satin gown and a coach?' I asked, when first I came. 'You may have a hundred and fifty satin gowns if you like,' said the Queen, 'and twenty coaches with six cream-colored horses to each.' But when I had been here a little time, and found I could have everything I wished for, and change it as often as I pleased, I began not to care for anything; and at last I got so sick of all their grand things that I dressed myself in my own clothes that I came in, and made up my mind to have a stall and sit at it, as I used to do, selling apples. And I used to say to myself, 'I have but to wish with all my heart to go home, and I can go, I know that;' but oh dear! oh dear! I couldn't wish enough, for it would come into my head that I should be poor, or that my boys would have forgotten me, or that my neighbors would look down on me, and so I always put off wishing for another day. Now here is the Queen coming. Sit down on the grass and play with Mopsa. Don't let her see us talking together, lest she should think I have been telling you things which you ought not to know." Jack looked, and saw the Queen coming slowly towards them, with her hands held out before her, as if it was dark. She felt her way, yet her eyes were wide open, and she was telling her stories all the time. "Don't you listen to a word she says," whispered the apple-woman; and then, in order that Jack might not hear what the Queen was talking about, she began to sing. She had no sooner begun than up from the river came swarms of one-foot-one fairies to listen, and hundreds of them dropped down from the trees. The Queen, too, seemed to attend as they did, though she kept murmuring her story all the time; and nothing that any of them did appeared to surprise the apple-woman,--she sang as if nobody was taking any notice at all:-- When I sit on market-days amid the comers and the goers, Oh! full oft I have a vision of the days without alloy, And a ship comes up the river with a jolly gang of towers, And a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!" There is busy talk around me, all about mine ears it hummeth, But the wooden wharves I look on, and a dancing, heaving buoy, For 'tis tidetime in the river, and she cometh--oh, she cometh! With a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!" Then I hear the water washing, never golden waves were brighter, And I hear the capstan creaking--'tis a sound that cannot cloy. Bring her to, to ship her lading, brig or schooner, sloop or lighter, With a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haule, yoy! heave, hoy!" "Will ye step aboard, my dearest? for the high seas lie before us." So I sailed adown the river in those days without alloy. We are launched! But when, I wonder, shall a sweeter sound float o'er us Than yon "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!"