'Yes, you are like the Queen of the Air Spirits!' exclaimed Hilda; 'though you don't look so haughty as she did at first.'
'Anyone else?' asked the lady again, speaking in a very gruff tone, and drawing her eyebrows together.
'Dear me! that is the way the King of the Gnomes talked,' said Hilda, clasping her hands. 'Surely you couldn't have been him?'
'Yes, my darlings,' said the lady, sitting down and drawing the three children to her lap, 'I am the Queen, your mother; though, by Rumpty-Dudget's spells, I was obliged to leave you, and to be seen by you only in your dreams at night. And I was what seemed to you the Queen of the Air Spirits, Hilda, and the King of the Gnomes as well; because love shows itself in many forms, and works for you above and beneath, and both while you wake and while you sleep; but it is always the same love in the end, and if you love one another you will find it out at last.'
'After all,' said Hilda thoughtfully, 'I love you best as our own mamma. And you will always be our mamma, and be with us now, won't you?'
'Yes, my darlings,' answered the Queen, giving them all a hug and a kiss; 'there will be no more changes or partings, for Rumpty-Dudget and his tower are gone, and we are free.'
'But where is Tom the Cat?' cried Hector all of a sudden, looking this way and that. 'We can never be happy anywhere without him.'
'Oh, Tom has done his work, and we shall not see him any more,' said the Queen, shaking her head mysteriously.
But at this all the children looked ready to cry.
'Well, then, you shall have one more look at him,' said the Queen. She wore on her shoulders a long hooded mantle of the finest white fur. By a sudden movement she drew this mantle round her, and pulled the hood over her head and face; and behold! there sat Tom the Cat, looking as natural as possible, only that between the folds of the fur the children could see their mother's eyes laughing.