At last, after a few dances, he heard a clear sweet, ringing voice say,
“I’ve had enough of this. I’m tired of doing like the big people. Let’s have a game of Hey Cockolorum Jig!”
That instant every group sprang asunder, and every fairy began a frolic on his own account. They scattered all over the cottage, and Colin lost sight of most of them.
While he lay watching the antics of two of those near him, who behaved more like clowns at a fair than the gentlemen they had been a little while before, he heard a voice close to his ear; but though he looked everywhere about his pillow, he could see nothing. The voice stopped the moment he began to look, but began again as soon as he gave it up.
“You can’t see me. I’m talking to you through a hole in the head of your bed.”
“Don’t look,” said the voice. “If the queen sees me I shall be pinched. Oh, please don’t.”
The voice sounded as if its owner would cry presently. So Colin took good care not to look. It went on:
“Please, I am a little girl, not a fairy. The queen stole me the minute I was born, seven years ago, and I can’t get away. I don’t like the fairies. They are so silly. And they never grow any wiser. I grow wiser every year. I want to get back to my own people. They won’t let me. They make me play at being somebody else all night long, and sleep all day. That’s what they do themselves. And I should so like to be myself. The queen says that’s not the way to be happy at all; but I do want very much to be a little girl. Do take me.”
“How am I to get you?” asked Colin in a whisper, which sounded, after the sweet voice of the changeling, like the wind in a field of dry beans.
“The queen is so pleased with you that she is sure to offer you something. Choose me. Here she comes.”
Immediately he heard another voice, shriller and stronger, in front of him; and, looking about, saw standing on the edge of the bed a lovely little creature, with a crown glittering with jewels, and a rush for a sceptre in her hand, the blossom of which shone like a bunch of garnets.
“You great staring creature!” she said. “Your eyes are much too big to see with. What clumsy hobgoblins you thick folk are!”
So saying, she laid her wand across Colin’s eyes.
“Now, then, stupid!” she said and that instant Colin saw the room like a huge barn, full of creatures about two feet high. The beams overhead were crowded with fairies, playing all imaginable tricks, scrambling everywhere, knocking each other over, throwing dust and soot in each other’s faces, grinning from behind corners, dropping on each other’s necks, and tripping up each other’s heels. Two had got hold of an empty eggshell, and coming behind one sitting on the edge of the table, and laughing at someone on the floor, tumbled it right over him, so that he was lost in the cavernous hollow. But the lady-fairies mingled in none of these rough pranks. Their tricks were always graceful, and they had more to say than to do.
But the moment the queen had laid her wand across his eyes, she went on:
“Know, son of a human mortal, that thou hast pleased a queen of the fairies. Lady as I am over the elements I cannot have everything I desire. One thing thou hast given me. Years have I longed for a path down this rivulet to the ocean below. Your horrid farmyard, ever since your great-grandfather built this cottage, was the one obstacle. For we fairies hate dirt, not only in houses, but in fields and woods as well, and above all in running streams. But I can’t talk like this any longer. I tell you what, you are a dear good boy, and you shall have what you please. Ask me for anything you like.”
“May it please your majesty,” said Colin, very deliberately, “I want a little girl that you carried away some seven years ago the moment she was born. May it please your majesty, I want her.”
“It does not please my majesty,” cried the queen, whose face had been growing very black. “Ask for something else.”
“Then, whether it pleases your majesty or not,” said Colin, bravely, “I hold your majesty to your word. I want that little girl, and that little girl I will have and nothing else.”
“You dare to talk so to me, you thick!”
“Yes, your majesty.”
“Then you shan’t have her.”
“Then I’ll turn the brook right through the dunghill,” said Colin. “Do you think I’ll let you come into my cottage to play at high jinks when you please, if you behave to me like this?”
And Colin sat up in bed, and looked the queen in the face. And as he did so he caught sight of the loveliest little creature peeping round the corner at the foot of the bed. And he knew she was the little girl because she was quiet, and looked frightened, and was sucking her thumb.
Then the queen, seeing with whom she had to deal, and knowing that queens in Fairyland are bound by their word, began to try another plan with him.
