Now, as I have told you before, that river runs up the country instead
of down to the sea, so Jack and Mopsa floated still farther up into
Fairyland; and they saw the Queen, and the apple-woman, and all the
crowd of fawns and fairies walking along the bank of the river,
keeping exactly to the same pace that the boat went; and this went on
for hours and hours, so that there seemed to be no chance that Jack
and Mopsa could land; and they heard no voices at all, nor any sound
but the baying of the old hound, who could not swim out to them,
because Jack had forbidden the boat to take anything of fairy birth on
board of her.
Luckily the bottom of the boat was full of those delicious flowers
that had dropped into it at breakfast-time, so there was plenty of
nice food for Jack and Mopsa; and Jack noticed, when he looked at her
towards evening, that she was now nearly as tall as himself, and that
her lovely brown hair floated down to her ankles.
"Jack," she said, before it grew dusk, "will you give me your little
purse that has the silver fourpence in it?"
Now Mopsa had often played with this purse. It was lined with a nice
piece of pale green silk, and when Jack gave it to her she pulled the
silk out, and shook it, and patted it, and stretched it, just as the
Queen had done, and it came into a most lovely cloak, which she tied
round her neck. Then she twisted up her long hair into a coil, and
fastened it round her head, and called to the fire-flies which were
beginning to glitter on the trees to come, and they came and alighted
in a row upon the coil, and turned into diamonds directly. So now
Mopsa had got a crown and a robe, and she was so beautiful that Jack
thought he should never be tired of looking at her; but it was nearly
dark now, and he was so sleepy and tired that he could not keep his
eyes open, though he tried very hard, and he began to blink, and then
he began to nod, and at last he fell fast asleep, and did not awake
till the morning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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