'I have often looked out at you so before now,' she said, as she threw back the hood and mantle; 'and you would have seen me as plainly as you do now, but that the spell prevented you. So, you see, we shall take what was really Tom the Cat along with us, after all.'
'Where are we going?' Harold asked.
'To our home in Fairyland,' answered the Queen.
'And are we never coming back here any more?' asked Hilda, glad to go, and yet with almost a sigh.
'No, we shall never see this land again,' the Queen replied. 'It was beautiful, but all its beauty lives again in the land whither we go. And there are no Rumpty-Dudgets in that land, and no grey towers full of corners, and no prickly hedges, nor winds from the north. And all the stars of the air and jewels of the earth are in that land, only more glorious and splendid than those that Hilda saw. But why should I tell you about it, when you are going to see it all for yourselves this very day? Are you ready?'
'Yes!' said all the children together.
Then she folded her arms about them, and they clung to her neck, and so they seemed to rise aloft in the warm air, and float towards the south. Far beneath them lay the tops of the tallest trees; but the children felt no fear. For they were going to their home in Fairyland; and they are all three living there, with the Queen their mother, to this very day.
But Hilda's hair is golden still, and her eyes are blue.