"Nor I either," replied Jack, almost in a pa.s.sion.

"It couldn't be helped, of course," said the other Jack.

"Hush! hush!" said the fairy woman; "don't wake our dear little Queen.

Was it you, my royal nephew, who spoke last?"

"Yes, dame," answered the boy, and again he offered the plate; but Jack was swelling with indignation, and he gave the plate a push with his elbow, which scattered the fruit and bread on the ground.

"I won't eat it," he said; but when the other Jack went and picked it up again, and said, "Oh, yes, do, old fellow; it's not my fault, you know," he began to consider that it was no use being cross in Fairyland; so he forgave his double, and had just finished his breakfast when Mopsa woke.

CHAPTER XV.

THE QUEEN'S WAND.

One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four; 'Tis still one, two, three, four.

Mellow and silvery are the tones, But I wish the bells were more.

SOUTHEY.

Mopsa woke: she was rather too big to be nursed, for she was the size of Jack, and looked like a sweet little girl of ten years, but she did not always behave like one; sometimes she spoke as wisely as a grown-up woman, and sometimes she changed again and seemed like a child.

Mopsa lifted up her head and pushed back her long hair: her coronet had fallen off while she was in the bed of reeds; and she said to the beautiful dame,--

"I am a queen now."

"Yes, my sweet Queen," answered the lady, "I know you are."

"And you promise that you will be kind to me till I grow up," said Mopsa, "and love me, and teach me how to reign?"

"Yes," repeated the lady; "and I will love you too, just as if you were a mortal and I your mother."

"For I am only ten years old yet," said Mopsa, "and the throne is too big for me to sit upon; but I am a queen." And then she paused, and said, "Is it three o'clock?"

As she spoke, the sweet, clear bell of the castle sounded three times, and then chimes began to play: they played such a joyous tune that it made everybody sing. The dame sang, the crowd of fairies sang, the boy who was Jack's double sang, and Mopsa sang,--only Jack was silent,--and this was the song:--

The prince shall to the chase again, The dame has got her face again, The king shall have his place again Aneath the fairy dome.

And all the knights shall woo again, And all the doves shall coo again, And all the dreams come true again, And Jack shall go home.

"We shall see about that!" thought Jack to himself. And Mopsa, while she sang those last words, burst into tears, which Jack did not like to see; but all the fairies were so very glad, so joyous, and so delighted with her for having come to be their queen, that after a while she dried her eyes, and said to the wrong boy,--

"Jack, when I pulled the lining out of your pocket-book there was a silver fourpence in it."

"Yes," said the real Jack, "and here it is."

"Is it real money?" asked Mopsa. "Are you sure you brought it with you all the way from your own country?"

"Yes," said Jack, "quite sure."

"Then, dear Jack," answered Mopsa, "will you give it to me?"

"I will," said Jack, "if you will send this boy away."

"How can I?" answered Mopsa, surprised. "Don't you know what happened when the door closed? Has n.o.body told you?"

"I did not see any one after I got into the place," said Jack. "There was no one to tell anything,--not even a fawn, nor the brown doe. I have only seen down here these fairy people, and this boy, and this lady."

"The lady is the brown doe," answered Mopsa; "and this boy and the fairies were the fawns." Jack was so astonished at this that he stared at the lady and the boy and the fairies with all his might.

"The sun came shining in as I stepped inside," said Mopsa, "and a long beam fell down from the fairy dome across my feet. Do you remember what the apple-woman told us,--how it was reported that the brown doe and her nation had a queen whom they shut up, and never let the sun shine on her? That was not a kind or true report, and yet it came from something that really happened."

"Yes, I remember," said Jack; "and if the sun did shine they were all to be turned into deer."

"I dare not tell you all that story yet," said Mopsa; "but, Jack, as the brown doe and all the fawns came up to greet me, and pa.s.sed by turns into the sunbeam, they took their own forms, every one of them, because the spell was broken. They were to remain in the disguise of deer till a queen of alien birth should come to them against her will.

I am a queen of alien birth, and did not I come against my will?"

"Yes, to be sure," answered Jack. "We thought all the time that we were running away."

"If ever you come to Fairyland again," observed Mopsa, "you can save yourself the trouble of trying to run away from the old mother."

"I shall not 'come,'" answered Jack, "because I shall not go,--not for a long while, at least. But the boy,--I want to know why this boy turned into another ME?"

"Because he is the heir, of course," answered Mopsa.

"But I don't see that this is any reason at all," said Jack.

Mopsa laughed. "That's because you don't know how to argue," she replied. "Why, the thing is as plain as possible."

"It may be plain to you," persisted Jack, "but it's no reason."

"No reason!" repeated Mopsa, "no reason! when I like you the best of anything in the world, and when I am come here to be queen? Of course, when the spell was broken he took exactly your form on that account; and very right too."

"But why?" asked Jack.

Mopsa, however, was like other fairies in this respect,--that she knew all about Old Mother Fate, but not about causes and reasons. She believed, as we do in this world, that

That that is, is;

but the fairies go further than this; they say:--

That that is, is; and when it is, that is the reason that it is.

This sounds like nonsense to us, but it is all right to them.