"It never does to wake him up," she said. "It makes him so bad tempered."
So she sat patiently and watched the rose-petals that every now and then fluttered down on the wind.
It was well on towards the afternoon, after the Queen had had her dinner, before he awoke.
"Oh, you're there?" he said. He had made the same remark every day for the last two years—which made seven hundred and thirty-one times, one of the years having been leap-year.
The Queen said, "Yes, here I am!"
The bat yawned. "What's the weather like?" he asked.
The Queen answered, "Oh, it's very nice, and you promised to tell me the flower that would make me fly."
"I shan't," the bat said. "You'd eat up all the flies—a great thing like you."
The Queen's eyes filled with tears, it was so disappointing.
"Oh, I promise I won't eat any flies," she said; "and I'll go right away and leave you in peace."