looking this
way and that. 'We can never be happy anywhere without him.'

'Oh, Tom has done his work, and we shall not see him any more,' said
the Queen, shaking her head mysteriously.

But at this all the children looked ready to cry.

'Well, then, you shall have one more look at him,' said the Queen. She
wore on her shoulders a long hooded mantle of the finest white fur. By
a sudden movement she drew this mantle round her, and pulled the hood
over her head and face; and behold! there sat Tom the Cat, looking as
natural as possible, only that between the folds of the fur the
children could see their mother's eyes laughing.

'I have often looked out at you so before now,' she said, as she threw
back the hood and mantle; 'and you would have seen me as plainly as
you do now, but that the spell prevented you. So, you see, we shall
take what was really Tom the Cat along with us, after all.'

'Where are we going?' Harold asked.

'To our home in Fairyland,' answered the Queen.

'And are we never coming back here any more?' asked Hilda, glad to
go, and yet with almost a sigh.

'No, we shall never see this land again,' the Queen replied. 'It was
beautiful, but all its beauty lives again in the land whither we go.
And there are no Rumpty-Dudgets in that land, and no grey towers full
of corners, and no prickly hedges, nor winds from the north. And all
the stars of the air and jewels of the earth are in that land, only
more glorious and splendid than those that Hilda saw. But why should I
tell you about it, when you are going to see it all for yourselves
this very day? Are you ready?'

'Yes!' said all the children together.

Then she folded her arms about them, and they clung to her neck, and
so they seemed to rise aloft in the warm air, and float towards the
south. Far beneath them lay the tops of the tallest trees; but the
children felt no fear. For they were going to their home in Fairyland;
and they are all three living there, with the Queen their mother, to
this very day.

But Hilda's hair is golden still, and her eyes are blue.

CALLADON.

CHAPTER I.

ABRACADABRA.

If you were to take three hoops, the second half as large round as the
first, and the third half as large round as the second, and lay them
on the floor one inside the other, you would have a ground-plan of the
house in which Calladon lived. The outermost wall was built of brick,
and had five narrow windows; the middle wall was of