“I don’t want Jack to go,” she answered.
“I don’t want to go, nor that you should,” said Jack.
“But the Queen said, ‘there cannot be two Queens in one hive,’ and that means that you are going to be turned out of this beautiful country.”
“The other fairy lands are just as nice,” answered Mopsa; “she can only turn me out of this one.”
“I never heard of more than one Fairyland,” observed Jack.
“It’s my opinion,” said the apple-woman, “that there are hundreds! And those one-foot-one fairies are such a saucy set, that if I were you I should be very glad to get away from them. You’ve been here a very little while as yet, and you’ve no notion what goes on when the leaves begin to drop.”
“Tell us,” said Jack.
“Well, you must know,” answered the apple-woman, “that fairies cannot abide cold weather; so, when the first rime frost comes, they bury themselves.”
“Bury themselves?” repeated Jack.
“Yes, I tell you, they bury themselves. You’ve seen fairy rings, of course, even in your own country; and here the fields are full of them. Well, when it gets cold a company of fairies forms itself into a circle, and every one digs a little hole. The first that has finished jumps into his hole, and his next neighbour covers him up, and then jumps into his own little hole, and he gets covered up in his turn, till at last there is only one left, and he goes and joins another circle, hoping he shall have better luck than to be last again. I’ve often asked them why they do that, but no fairy can ever give a reason for anything. They always say that old Mother Fate makes them do it. When they come up again, they are not fairies at all, but the good ones are mushrooms, and the bad ones are toadstools.”