"How did you come to be able to fly?" the Queen asked.
"Well, after what the cockchafer told me, I just ran out into the garden, and when I found the flower, as I hadn't any pocket to put it in so as to have it always by me, I just ate it up, and from that time forward I have been able to fly ever so well."
The Queen said, "Oh, how nice! And is the flower actually here in the garden? Tell me which it is, please do."
"Well, I'll tell you if you'll bring me a nice piece of raw meat, and a little red flannel for my rheumatism."
Just at that moment the sound of a great bell sounded out into the garden.
"Oh, how annoying!" the Queen said. "Just as it was beginning to be interesting! Now I shall have to go in to dinner. But I'll bring you the meat and the flannel to-morrow, and then you'll tell me, won't you?"
The bat said, "We'll see about it," and so the Queen arose from her seat, and, stooping to avoid the roses that caught at her, went out towards the palace and up the marble steps into it.
The palace was an enormous hall, all of marble, and very, very cold.
The dining-room itself was a vast hall, as long as an ordinary street, with a table as long and as broad as the roadway thereof, so that the poor little Queen felt rather lonely, sitting at one end of it, with the enormous vessels all of gold, and the great gold candlesticks, and the long line of deaf and dumb domestics that stood and looked on, or presented their dishes kneeling.
Generally the Regent's wife, or, if he hadn't one, his sister or mother, acted as the Queen's governess, and stood behind her chair. But that evening there was no one at all.