st think: if your face were only three-quarters of
an inch long, all those features of it that are so disagreeable
wouldn't show so plainly. You might even look rather pretty. You
wouldn't need to be so, but you might look so.

And it would be so much easier to know where you were, if you were of
that size, that it would save your mother a good deal of trouble. All
she would have to do would be to put you on the mantelpiece, and then
you could not get off without breaking your necks--and that would be
such an advantage. I don't mean that it would be an advantage to break
your necks, because then who would read this book, and why should I
take all this trouble to write it? I mean, it would be an advantage
that you could not get off. Well, now you see how much better off you
would be if you were only six inches tall, and now you understand
about the fairies.

* * * * *

While Kathleen was still wondering at the place that she was in, a man
whom she had not seen before came up to her. He wore a crown, and she
guessed at once that he was some sort of king. It did not surprise her
to see a man with a crown. A man with a church steeple on his head
would not have surprised her, by this time. "Come with me," he said;
"you're wanted at once."

Kathleen followed him to the opposite side of the hall and through a
door, into another room. It was much smaller than the hall, but it was
just as beautiful, in its own way. There was a woman in this
room--another of the beautiful girls, Kathleen would have said--lying
on a gold couch. Her hair was hanging down over the pillow on which
her head lay, so that Kathleen could scarcely tell which was the hair
and which was the gold of the couch. There was a crown lying on a
little table beside her, and so Kathleen guessed that she was the
Queen. "Kathleen," said the Queen, "do you know why they have brought
you here?"

"No, Your Majesty," said Kathleen. She was not a bit frightened, any
more than she had been all along, and she knew that that was the way
to speak to a queen, just as well as if she had never spoken to
anybody else in her life.

"They brought you here, then," said the Queen, "to take care of my
baby; but he'll not need you long, and then you can be going back
home."

"I'm afraid," Kathleen said, "that I don't know how to take care of a
baby very well. I might do something wrong with it. You see my mother
died when I was born, and so I was