"The sun came shining in as I stepped inside," said Mopsa, "and a long beam fell down from the fairy dome across my feet. Do you remember what the apple-woman told us,--how it was reported that the brown doe and her nation had a queen whom they shut up, and never let the sun shine on her? That was not a kind or true report, and yet it came from something that really happened." "Yes, I remember," said Jack; "and if the sun did shine they were all to be turned into deer." "I dare not tell you all that story yet," said Mopsa; "but, Jack, as the brown doe and all the fawns came up to greet me, and passed by turns into the sunbeam, they took their own forms, every one of them, because the spell was broken. They were to remain in the disguise of deer till a queen of alien birth should come to them against her will. I am a queen of alien birth, and did not I come against my will?" "Yes, to be sure," answered Jack. "We thought all the time that we were running away." "If ever you come to Fairyland again," observed Mopsa, "you can save yourself the trouble of trying to run away from the old mother." "I shall not 'come,'" answered Jack, "because I shall not go,--not for a long while, at least. But the boy,--I want to know why this boy turned into another ME?" "Because he is the heir, of course," answered Mopsa. "But I don't see that this is any reason at all," said Jack. Mopsa laughed. "That's because you don't know how to argue," she replied. "Why, the thing is as plain as possible." "It may be plain to you," persisted Jack, "but it's no reason." "No reason!" repeated Mopsa, "no reason! when I like you the best of anything in the world, and when I am come here to be queen? Of course, when the spell was broken he took exactly your form on that account; and very right too." "But why?" asked Jack. Mopsa, however, was like other fairies in this respect,--that she knew all about Old Mother Fate, but not about causes and reasons. She believed, as we do in this world, that That that is, is; but the fairies go further than this; they say:-- That that is, is; and when it is, that is the reason that it is. This sounds like nonsense to us, but it is all right to them. So Mopsa, thinking she had explained everything, said again,-- "And, dear Jack, will you give the silver fourpence to me?" Jack took it out; and she got down from the dame's knee and took it in the palm of her hand, laying the other palm upon it. "It will be very hot," observed the dame. "But it will not burn me so as really to hurt, if I am a real queen," said Mopsa. Presently she began to look as if something gave her pain. "Oh, it's so hot!" she said to the other Jack; "so very hot!" "Never mind, sweet Queen," he answered; "it will not hurt you long. Remember my poor uncle and all his knights."