“Then you think there are no one-foot-one fairies in the other countries?” said Jack.
“Of course not,” answered the apple-woman; “all the fairy lands are different. It’s only the queens that are alike.”
“WELL, YOU MUST KNOW,” ANSWERED THE APPLE-WOMAN, “THAT FAIRIES CANNOT ABIDE COLD WEATHER.”
“I wish the fairies would not disappear for hours,” said Jack. “They all seem to run off and hide themselves.”
“That’s their way,” answered the apple-woman. “All fairies are part of their time in the shape of human creatures, and the rest of it in the shape of some animal. These can turn themselves, when they please, into Guinea-fowl. In the heat of the day they generally prefer to be in that form, and they sit among the leaves of the trees.
“A great many are now with the Queen, because there is a deputation coming; but if I were to begin to sing, such a flock of Guinea-hens would gather round, that the boughs of the trees would bend with their weight, and they would light on the grass all about so thickly that not a blade of grass would be seen as far as the song was heard.”
So she began to sing, and the air was darkened by great flocks of these Guinea-fowl. They alighted just as she had said, and kept time with their heads and their feet, nodding like a crowd of mandarins; and yet it was nothing but a stupid old song that you would have thought could have no particular meaning for them.
LIKE A LAVEROCK IN THE LIFT
I