So the spring came on, and the earth grew green, and it was the time of sowing, and the Queen had almost forgotten that she was able to fly—indeed, she mostly left her wind-flower crown at home.
But one day her eye fell upon it, and the thought suddenly struck her that the bat had said that the wind-flowers had the power of curing blindness.
"Now, if only I knew how it was to be done, or if I had a few more of them I'd cure him. Now, it's not really so very far from here to there. I might just fly over to the palace garden and ask the bat, and be back this very evening"—for it was then the early morning. "And I won't tell them anything about it, and it'll be delightful."
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.