"The flower you want is at this moment being trodden on by your foot."
The Queen felt a little startled, but, looking down, saw a delicate
white flower that had trailed from a border and was being crushed
beneath her small green shoes.
"What! the wind-flower?" she said. "I always thought it was only a
weed."
"You shouldn't think," the bat said. "It's as bad as supposing."
"Well, and how am I to set about flying?" the Queen asked.
And the bat answered sharply, "Why, fly. Put the flower somewhere about
you, and then go off. Only be careful not to knock against things."
The Queen thought for a moment, and then plucked a handful and a handful
and yet a handful of the wind-flowers, and, having twined them into a
carcanet, wound them into her soft gold-brown hair, beneath her small
crown royal.
"Good-bye, dear bat," she said. She had grown to like the bat, for all
his strange appearance and surly speeches.
The bat remarked, "Good riddance." He was always a little irritable
just after awakening.
So the Queen went out from under the arbour, and made a first essay at
flying.
"I'll make just a short flight at first," she said, and gave a little
jump, and in a moment she flew right over a rose bush and came down
softly on the turf on its further side, quite like a not too timid
pigeon that has to make a little flight from before a horse's feet.
"Oh, come, that was a success," she said to herself. "And it really is
true. Well, I'll just practise a little before I start to see the
world."
So she flew over several trees, gradually going higher and higher, until
at last she caught a glimpse of the red town roofs, and then, in a swift
moment's rush, she flew over the high white wall and alighted in the
road that bordered it.
"Hullo!" a voice said before she had got used to the new sensation of
being out in the world. "Hullo! where did you drop from?"
"I didn't drop--I flew," the Queen said severely; and she looked at the
man.
He was stretched on the ground, leaning his back against the wall, and
basking in the hot sunlight that fell on him. He was very ragged and
very dirty, and he had neither shoes nor stockings, By his side was a
basket in which, over white paper frills, nodded the heads of young
ferns.
"Why, who are you?" the Queen said. And then her eyes fell on his bare
feet. They reminded her of what the Regent had said that morning. "Oh,
you must be the poor," she said, "and you want my stockings."
"I don't know about your stockings, lady," the man said; "but if you've
got any old clothes to spare, I could give you some nice pots of flowers
for them."