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