"Well, and how am I to set about flying?" the Queen asked.
And the bat answered sharply, "Why, fly. Put the flower somewhere about you, and then go off. Only be careful not to knock against things."
The Queen thought for a moment, and then plucked a handful and a handful and yet a handful of the wind-flowers, and, having twined them into a carcanet, wound them into her soft gold-brown hair, beneath her small crown royal.
"Good-bye, dear bat," she said. She had grown to like the bat, for all his strange appearance and surly speeches.
The bat remarked, "Good riddance." He was always a little irritable just after awakening.
So the Queen went out from under the arbour, and made a first essay at flying.
"I'll make just a short flight at first," she said, and gave a little jump, and in a moment she flew right over a rose bush and came down softly on the turf on its further side, quite like a not too timid pigeon that has to make a little flight from before a horse's feet.
"Oh, come, that was a success," she said to herself. "And it really is true. Well, I'll just practise a little before I start to see the world."
So she flew over several trees, gradually going higher and higher, until at last she caught a glimpse of the red town roofs, and then, in a swift moment's rush, she flew over the high white wall and alighted in the road that bordered it.
"Hullo!" a voice said before she had got used to the new sensation of being out in the world. "Hullo! where did you drop from?"