As the apple-woman left off singing, the Queen moved away, still murmuring the words of her story, and Jack said,-- "Does the Queen tell stories of what has happened, or of what is going to happen?" "Why, of what is going to happen, of course," replied the woman. "Anybody could tell the other sort." "Because I heard a little of it," observed Jack. "I thought she was talking of me. She said 'So he took the measure, and Mopsa stood still for once, and he found she was only one foot high, and she grew a great deal after that. Yes, she can grow.'" "That's a fine hearing, and a strange hearing," said the apple-woman; "and what did she mutter next?" "Of how she heard me sobbing," replied Jack; "and while you went on about stepping on board the ship, she said, 'He was very good to me, dear little fellow! But Fate is the name of my old mother, and she reigns here. Oh, she reigns! The fatal F is in her name, and I cannot take it out!'" "Ah!" replied the apple-woman, "they all say that, and that they are fays, and that mortals call their history fable; they are always crying out for an alphabet without the fatal F." "And then she told how she heard Mopsa sobbing too," said Jack; "sobbing among the reeds and rushes by the river side." "There are no reeds, and no rushes either, here," said the apple-woman, "and I have walked the river from end to end. I don't think much of that part of the story. But you are sure she said that Mopsa was short of her proper height?" "Yes, and that she would grow; but that's nothing. In my country we always grow." "Hold your tongue about you country!" said the apple-woman, sharply. "Do you want to make enemies of them all?" Mopsa had been listening to this, and now she said, "I don't love the Queen. She slapped my arm as she went by, and it hurts." Mopsa showed her little fat arm as she spoke, and there was a red place on it. "That's odd, too," said the apple-woman; "there's nothing red in a common fairy's veins. They have sap in them: that's why they can't blush." Just then the sun went down, and Mopsa got up on the apple-woman's lap, and went to sleep; and Jack, being tired, went to his boat and lay down under the purple canopy, his old hound lying at his feet to keep guard over him. The next morning, when he woke, a pretty voice called to him, "Jack! Jack!" and he opened his eyes and saw Mopsa. The apple-woman had dressed her in a clean frock and blue shoes, and her hair was so long! She was standing on the landing-place, close to him. "O Jack! I'm so big," she said. "I grew in the night; look at me." Jack looked. Yes, Mopsa had grown indeed; she had only just reached to his knee the day before, and now her little bright head, when he measured her, came as high as the second button of his waistcoat. "But I hope you will not go on growing so fast as this," said Jack, "or you will be as tall as my mamma is in a week or two,--much too big for me to play with." CHAPTER X. MOPSA LEARNS HER LETTERS.