nd I can go, I know
that;' but oh dear! oh dear! I couldn't wish enough, for it would come
into my head that I should be poor, or that my boys would have
forgotten me, or that my neighbors would look down on me, and so I
always put off wishing for another day. Now here is the Queen coming.
Sit down on the grass and play with Mopsa. Don't let her see us
talking together, lest she should think I have been telling you things
which you ought not to know."

Jack looked, and saw the Queen coming slowly towards them, with her
hands held out before her, as if it was dark. She felt her way, yet
her eyes were wide open, and she was telling her stories all the
time.

"Don't you listen to a word she says," whispered the apple-woman; and
then, in order that Jack might not hear what the Queen was talking
about, she began to sing.

She had no sooner begun than up from the river came swarms of
one-foot-one fairies to listen, and hundreds of them dropped down from
the trees. The Queen, too, seemed to attend as they did, though she
kept murmuring her story all the time; and nothing that any of them
did appeared to surprise the apple-woman,--she sang as if nobody was
taking any notice at all:--

When I sit on market-days amid the comers and the goers,
Oh! full oft I have a vision of the days without alloy,
And a ship comes up the river with a jolly gang of towers,
And a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!"

There is busy talk around me, all about mine ears it hummeth,
But the wooden wharves I look on, and a dancing, heaving buoy,
For 'tis tidetime in the river, and she cometh--oh, she cometh!
With a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!"

Then I hear the water washing, never golden waves were brighter,
And I hear the capstan creaking--'tis a sound that cannot cloy.
Bring her to, to ship her lading, brig or schooner, sloop or
lighter,
With a "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haule, yoy! heave, hoy!"

"Will ye step aboard, my dearest? for the high seas lie before us."
So I sailed adown the river in those days without alloy.
We are launched! But when, I wonder, shall a sweeter sound float
o'er us
Than yon "pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!"

As the apple-woman left off singing, the Queen moved away, still
murmuring the words of her story, and Jack said,--

"Does the Queen tell stories of what has happened, or of what is going
to happen?"