"Why, of what is going to happen, of course," replied the woman.
"Anybody could tell the other sort."

"Because I heard a little of it," observed Jack. "I thought she was
talking of me. She said 'So he took the measure, and Mopsa stood
still for once, and he found she was only one foot high, and she grew
a great deal after that. Yes, she can grow.'"

"That's a fine hearing, and a strange hearing," said the apple-woman;
"and what did she mutter next?"

"Of how she heard me sobbing," replied Jack; "and while you went on
about stepping on board the ship, she said, 'He was very good to me,
dear little fellow! But Fate is the name of my old mother, and she
reigns here. Oh, she reigns! The fatal F is in her name, and I cannot
take it out!'"

"Ah!" replied the apple-woman, "they all say that, and that they are
fays, and that mortals call their history fable; they are always
crying out for an alphabet without the fatal F."

"And then she told how she heard Mopsa sobbing too," said Jack;
"sobbing among the reeds and rushes by the river side."

"There are no reeds, and no rushes either, here," said the
apple-woman, "and I have walked the river from end to end. I don't
think much of that part of the story. But you are sure she said that
Mopsa was short of her proper height?"

"Yes, and that she would grow; but that's nothing. In my country we
always grow."

"Hold your tongue about you country!" said the apple-woman, sharply.
"Do you want to make enemies of them all?"

Mopsa had been listening to this, and now she said, "I don't love the
Queen. She slapped my arm as she went by, and it hurts."

Mopsa showed her little fat arm as she spoke, and there was a red
place on it.

"That's odd, too," said the apple-woman; "there's nothing red in a
common fairy's veins. They have sap in them: that's why they can't
blush."

Just then the sun went down, and Mopsa got up on the apple-woman's
lap, and went to sleep; and Jack, being tired, went to his boat and
lay down under the purple canopy, his old hound lying at his feet to
keep guard over him.

The next morning, when he woke, a pretty voice called to him, "Jack!
Jack!" and he opened his eyes and saw Mopsa. The apple-woman had
dressed her in a clean frock and blue shoes, and her hair was so long!
She was standing on the landing-place, close to him. "O Jack! I'm so
big," she said. "I grew in the night; look at me."

Jack looked. Yes, Mopsa had grown indeed; she had only just