And so, without any more hesitation, she just opened the little window and was up among the dawn-clouds that were sweeping up from over the sea. It was a little chilly and very lonely up there, and the silent flights of seagulls that she caught up and overpassed seemed too alarmed to talk to her. The Queen felt a little lost, as if there were something missing. "Somehow it doesn’t seem half as nice as it used to do," she said to herself. "I wonder why it is? I don’t think, after I get home—I mean back here—I shall ever go flying again." But she folded her hands in her cloak and went silently on over the grey shimmering sea. The sun grew higher and higher, and it was about eight in the morning before she was hovering over the city. She alighted in a street that seemed somewhat empty, because she disliked the attention that her mode of progression usually excited. Just in front of her, under a shed formed by the pushing up of the shutters of his shop, a tailor was seated, cross-legged, working away with his head bent down over his work. "Good morning!" the Queen said. "Can I be of any use to you?" The tailor peered up at her through a great pair of horn spectacles. "Eh?" he said. "I said, ’Can I be of any use to you?’" the Queen replied. And the tailor regarded her in a dazed way. Suddenly he said— "Oh yes; marry me, marry me, only marry me!" The Queen said, "Oh, nonsense," because she had just remembered the elixir. But the tailor answered, "It isn’t nonsense—it really isn’t. It’s true I’m married already; but I’ll knock my wife on the head, and then I’ll be free." But before the Queen could answer anything at all there began a sudden growling sound that resolved itself into a succession of footsteps coming rapidly down wooden steps, and, in a moment, a door burst open just behind the tailor’s back. There was an old woman with a great broom just behind it. "Ah, would ye now! murder your wife, a respectable married woman, for the sake of a hussy that comes dropping down out of the chimney-tops. I’ll teach you." And with one sweep of her broom she knocked the poor little tailor off his board, and made a dash at the Queen. But the Queen took to her heels and ran off. "Why, she’s worse than Mrs. Hexer," she said to herself. "But really this elixir is a great nuisance. It makes it impossible to have any peace. But I wonder what all the flags and decorations are about." Just at that moment two people, who appeared to be a servant-girl and her mother, came out of a neighbouring house. They were very gay in holiday costume. "What is to happen to-day?" the Queen asked. And the mother answered, "Why, don’t you know? The Queen is twenty-one to-day, and she’s going to marry the Regent, Lord Blackjowl." "Going to marry the Regent!" the Queen said. "Why, who told you so?" "Everybody knows it," the mother answered. "But how did everybody get to know it?" the Queen asked.