CHAPTER X.

MOPSA LEARNS HER LETTERS.

A----apple-pie. B----bit it.

"How ashamed I am," Jack said, "to think that you don't know even your letters!"

Mopsa replied that she thought that did not signify, and then she and Jack began to play at jumping from the boat on to the bank, and back again; and afterwards, as not a single fairy could be seen, they had breakfast with the apple-woman.

"Where is the Queen?" asked Jack.

The apple-woman answered, "It's not the fashion to ask questions in Fairyland."

"That's a pity," said Jack, "for there are several things that I particularly want to know about this country. Mayn't I even ask how big it is?"

"How big?" said Mopsa,--little Mopsa looking as wise as possible. "Why, the same size as your world, of course."

Jack laughed. "It's the same world that you call yours," continued Mopsa; "and when I'm a little older, I'll explain it all to you."

"If it's our world," said Jack, "why are none of us in it, excepting me and the apple-woman?"

"That's because you've got something in your world that you call TIME," said Mopsa; "so you talk about NOW, and you talk about THEN."

"And don't you?" asked Jack.

"I do if I want to make you understand," said Mopsa.

The apple-woman laughed, and said, "To think of the pretty thing talking so queen-like already! Yes, that's right, and just what the grown-up fairies say. Go on, and explain it to him if you can."

"You know," said Mopsa, "that your people say there was a time when there were none of them in the world,--a time before they were made. Well, THIS is that time. This is long ago."

"Nonsense!" said Jack. "Then how do I happen to be here?"

"Because," said Mopsa, "when the albatross brought you, she did not fly with you a long way off, but a long way back,--hundreds and hundreds of years. This is your world, as you can see; but none of your people are here, because they are not made yet. I don't think any of them will be made for a thousand years."

"But I saw the old ships," answered Jack, "in the enchanted bay."

"That was a border country," said Mopsa. "I was asleep while you went through those countries; but these are the real Fairylands."

Jack was very much surprised when he heard Mopsa say these strange things; and as he looked at her, he felt that a sleep was coming over him, and he could not hold up his head. He felt how delightful it was to go to sleep; and though the apple-woman sprang to him, when she observed that he was shutting his eyes, and though he heard her begging and entreating him to keep awake, he did not want to do so; but he let his head sink down on the mossy grass, which was as soft as a pillow, and there, under the shade of a Guelder rose-tree, that kept dropping its white flowerets all over him, he had this dream:

He thought that Mopsa came running up to him, as he stood by the river, and that he said to her, "Oh, Mopsa, how old we are! We have lived back to the times before Adam and Eve!"

"Yes," said Mopsa; "but I don't feel old. Let us go down the river, and see what we can find."

So they got into the boat, and it floated into the middle of the river, and then made for the opposite bank, where the water was warm and very muddy, and the river became so very wide that it seemed to be afternoon when they got near enough to see it clearly; and what they saw was a boggy country, green, and full of little rills; but the water,--which, as I told you, was thick and muddy,--the water was full of small holes! You never saw water with eyelet-holes in it; but Jack