The Tempest.
When breakfast was over, the guests got up, one after the other, without taking the least notice of the Queen; and the tent began to get so thin and transparent that you could see the trees and the sky through it. At last, it looked only like a coloured mist, with blue, and green, and yellow stripes, and then it was gone; and the table and all the things on it began to go in the same way. Only Jack, and the apple-woman, and Mopsa were left, sitting on their chairs, with the Queen between them.
Presently, the Queen’s lips began to move, and her eyes looked straight before her, as she sat upright in her chair. Whereupon the apple-woman snatched up Mopsa, and, seizing Jack’s hand, hurried him off, exclaiming, “Come away! come away! She is going to tell one of her stories; and if you listen, you’ll be obliged to go to sleep, and sleep nobody knows how long.”
Jack did not want to go to sleep; he wished to go down to the river again, and see what had become of his boat, for he had left his cap and several other things in it.
So he parted from the apple-woman—who took Mopsa with her, and said he would find her again when he wanted her at her apple-stall—and went down to the boat, where he saw that his faithful hound was there before him.
“It was lucky, master, that I came when I did,” said the hound, “for a dozen or so of those one-foot-one fellows were just shoving it off, and you will want it at night to sleep in.”
“Yes,” said Jack; “and I can stretch the bit of purple silk to make a canopy over head—a sort of awning—for I should not like to sleep in tents or palaces that are inclined to melt away.”
So the hound with his teeth, and Jack with his hands, pulled and pulled at the silk till it was large enough to make a splendid canopy, like a tent; and it reached down to the water’s edge, and roofed in all the after part of the boat.
So now he had a delightful little home of his own; and there was no fear of its being blown away, for no wind ever blows in Fairyland. All the trees are quite still, no leaf rustles, and the flowers lie on the ground exactly where they fall.
After this Jack told the hound to watch his boat, and went himself in search of the apple-woman. Not one fairy was to be seen, any more than if he had been in his own country, and he wandered down the green margin of the river till he saw the apple-woman sitting at a small stall with apples on it, and cherries tied to sticks, and some dry-looking nuts. She had Mopsa on her knee, and had washed her face, and put a beautiful clean white frock on her.