Both Jack and Mopsa noticed this, but neither said a word. The thirtieth coil brushed Jack's cap off, then they had to stoop to pass under the two next, and then they had to lie down in the bottom of the boat, and they got through with the greatest difficulty; but still before them was another! The boat was driving straight towards it, and it lay so close to the water that the arch it made was only a foot high. When Jack saw it, he called out, "No! that I cannot bear. Somebody else may do the rest of this dream. I shall jump overboard." Mopsa seemed to answer in quite a pleasant voice, as if she was not afraid,-- "No, you'd much better wake." And then she went on, "Jack! Jack! why don't you wake!" Then all on a sudden Jack opened his eyes, and found that he was lying quietly on the grass, that little Mopsa really had asked him why he did not wake. He saw the Queen too, standing by, looking at him, and saying to herself, "_I_ did not put him to sleep. _I_ did not put him to sleep." "We don't want any more stories to-day, Queen," said the apple-woman, in a disrespectful tone, and she immediately began to sing, clattering some tea-things all the time, for a kettle was boiling on some sticks, and she was going to make tea out of doors:-- The marten flew to the finch's nest, Feathers, and moss, and a wisp of hay: "The arrow it sped to thy brown mate's breast; Low in the broom is thy mate to-day." "Liest thou low, love? low in the broom? Feathers and moss, and a wisp of hay, Warm the white eggs till I learn his doom." She beateth her wings, and away, away. "Ah, my sweet singer, thy days are told (Feathers and moss, and a wisp of hay)! Thine eyes are dim, and the eggs grow cold. O mournful morrow! O dark to-day!" The finch flew back to her cold, cold nest, Feathers and moss, and a wisp of hay, Mine is the trouble that rent her breast, And home is silent, and love is clay. Jack felt very tired indeed,--as much tired as if he had really been out all day on the river, and gliding under the coils of the Craken. He however rose up, when the apple-woman called him, and drank his tea, and had some fairy bread with it, which refreshed him very much. After tea he measured Mopsa again, and found that she had grown up to a higher button. She looked much wiser too, and when he said she must be taught to read she made no objection, so he arranged daisies and buttercups into the forms of the letters, and she learnt nearly all of them that one evening, while crowds of the one-foot-one fairies looked on, hanging from the boughs and sitting in the grass, and shouting out the names of the letters as Mopsa said them. They were very polite to Jack, for they gathered all these flowers for him, and emptied them from their little caps at his feet as fast as he wanted them. CHAPTER XI. GOOD-MORNING, SISTER.