will give you the Bee and the
Harp for it."

"O, but," Jack says, says he, "my poor mother at home is very sad and
sorrowful entirely, and I have this cow to sell and lift her heart again."

"And better than this she cannot get," says the man. "For when she sees the
Bee play the Harp, she will laugh if she never laughed in her life before."

"Well," says Jack, says he, "that will be grand."

He made the bargain. The man took the cow; and Jack started home with the
Bee and the Harp in his pocket, and when he came home, his mother welcomed
him back.

"And, Jack," says she, "I see you have sold the cow."

"I have done that," says Jack.

"Did you do well?" says the mother.

"I did well, and very well," says Jack.

"How much did you get for her?" says the mother.

"O," says he, "it was not for money at all I sold her, but for something
far better."

"O, Jack! Jack!" says she, "what have you done?"

"Just wait until you see, mother," says he, "and you will soon say I have
done well."

Out of his pocket he takes the Bee and the Harp and sets them in the middle
of the floor, and whistles to them, and as soon as he did this the Bee
began to play the Harp, and the mother she looked at them and let a big,
great laugh out of her, and she and Jack began to dance, the pots and pans,
the wheels and reels began to jig and dance over the floor, and the house
itself hopped about also.

When Jack picked up the Bee and the Harp again the dancing all stopped, and
the mother laughed for a long time. But when she came to herself, she got
very angry entirely with Jack, and she told him he was a silly, foolish
fellow, that there was neither food nor money in the house, and now he had
lost one of her good cows also. "We must do something to live," says she.
"Over to the fair you must go to-morrow morning, and take the black cow
with you and sell her."

And off in the morning at an early hour brave Jack started, and never
halted until he was in the fair. When he came into the fair, he saw a big
crowd gathered in a ring in the street. Said Jack to himself, "I wonder
what are they looking at."

Into the crowd he pushed, and saw the wee man this day again with a Mouse
and a Bum-clock, and he put them down in the street and whistled. The Mouse
and the Bum-clock stood up on their hind legs and got hold of each other
and began to dance there and jig, and as they did there was not a man or
woman in the street who didn't begin to jig