“Ah!” replied the apple-woman, “they all say that, and that they are fays, and that mortals call their history fable; they are always crying out for an alphabet without the fatal F.”
“And then she told how she heard Mopsa sobbing too,” said Jack; “sobbing among the reeds and rushes by the river side.”
“There are no reeds and no rushes either here,” said the apple-woman, “and I have walked the river from end to end. I don’t think much of that part of the story. But you are sure she said that Mopsa was short of her proper height?”
“Yes, and that she would grow; but that’s nothing. In my country we always grow.”
“Hold your tongue about your country!” said the apple-woman, sharply. “Do you want to make enemies of them all?”
Mopsa had been listening to this, and now she said, “I don’t love the Queen. She slapped my arm as she went by, and it hurts.”
Mopsa showed her little fat arm as she spoke, and there was a red place on it.
“That’s odd too,” said the apple-woman; “there’s nothing red in a common fairy’s veins. They have sap in them: that’s why they can’t blush.”
Just then the sun went down, and Mopsa got up on the apple-woman’s lap and went to sleep; and Jack, being tired, went to his boat and lay down under the purple canopy, his old hound lying at his feet to keep guard over him.
The next morning, when he woke, a pretty voice called to him, “Jack! Jack!” and he opened his eyes and saw Mopsa. The apple-woman had dressed her in a clean frock and blue shoes, and her hair was so long! She was standing on the landing-place, close to him. “O Jack! I’m so big,” she said. “I grew in the night; look at me.”