Now, as I have told you before, that river runs up the country instead of down to the sea, so Jack and Mopsa floated still farther up into Fairyland; and they saw the Queen, and the apple-woman, and all the crowd of fawns and fairies walking along the bank of the river, keeping exactly to the same pace that the boat went; and this went on for hours and hours, so that there seemed to be no chance that Jack and Mopsa could land; and they heard no voices at all, nor any sound but the baying of the old hound, who could not swim out to them, because Jack had forbidden the boat to take anything of fairy birth on board of her.
Luckily, the bottom of the boat was full of those delicious flowers that had dropped into it at breakfast-time, so there was plenty of nice food for Jack and Mopsa; and Jack noticed, when he looked at her towards evening, that she was now nearly as tall as himself, and that her lovely brown hair floated down to her ankles.
“Jack,” she said, before it grew dusk, “will you give me your little purse that has the silver fourpence in it?”
Now Mopsa had often played with this purse. It was lined with a nice piece of pale green silk, and when Jack gave it to her she pulled the silk out, and shook it, and patted it, and stretched it, just as the Queen had done, and it came into a most lovely cloak, which she tied round her neck. Then she twisted up her long hair into a coil, and fastened it round her head, and called to the fireflies which were beginning to glitter on the trees to come, and they came and alighted in a row upon the coil, and turned into diamonds directly. So now Mopsa had got a crown and a robe, and she was so beautiful that Jack thought he should never be tired of looking at her; but it was nearly dark now, and he was so sleepy and tired that he could not keep his eyes open, though he tried very hard, and he began to blink, and then he began to nod, and at last he fell fast asleep, and did not awake till the morning.
Then he sat up in the boat, and looked about him. A wonderful country, indeed!—no trees, no grass, no houses, nothing but red stones and red sand—and Mopsa was gone. Jack jumped on shore, for the boat had stopped, and was close to the brink of the river. He looked about for some time, and at last, in the shadow of a pale brown rock, he found her; and oh! delightful surprise, the apple-woman was there too. She was saying, “O my bones! Dearie, dearie me, how they do ache!” That was not surprising, for she had been out all night. She had walked beside the river with the Queen and her tribe till they came to a little tinkling stream, which divides their country from the sandy land, and there they were obliged to stop; they could not cross it. But the apple-woman sprang over, and, though the Queen told her she must come back again in twenty-four hours, she did not appear to be displeased. Now the Guinea-hens, when they had come to listen, the day before, to the apple-woman’s song, had brought each of them a grain of maize in her beak, and had thrown it into her apron; so when she got up she carried it with her gathered up there, and now she had been baking some delicious little cakes on a fire of dry sticks that the river had drifted down, and Mopsa had taken a honey-comb from the rock, so they all had a very nice breakfast. And the apple-woman gave them a great deal of good advice, and told them if they wished to remain in Fairyland, and not be caught by the brown doe and her followers, they must cross over the purple mountains, “For on the other side of those peaks,” she said, “I have heard that fairies live who have the best of characters for being kind and just. I am sure they would never shut up a poor queen in a castle.
“But the best thing you could do, dear,” she said to Mopsa, “would be to let Jack call the bird, and make her carry you back to his own country.”
“The Queen is not at all kind,” said Jack; “I have been very kind to her, and she should have let Mopsa stay.”
“No, Jack, she could not,” said Mopsa; “but I wish I had not grown so fast, and I don’t like to go to your country. I would rather run away.”
“But who is to tell us where to run?” asked Jack.
“Oh,” said Mopsa, “some of these people.”