“Pick it up,” said Mopsa to the other Jack; and he instantly did so, and laid it in her hand again; and she began gently to roll it backwards and forwards between her palms till she had rolled it into a very slender rod, two feet long, and not nearly so thick as a pin; but it did not bend, and it shone so brightly that you could hardly look at it.
Then she held it out towards the real Jack, and said, “Give this a name.”
“I think it is a——” began the other Jack; but the dame suddenly stopped him. “Silence, sire! Don’t you know that what it is first called that it will be?”
Jack hesitated; he thought if Mopsa was a queen the thing ought to be a sceptre; but it certainly was not at all like a sceptre.
“That thing is a wand,” said he.
“You are a wand,” said Mopsa, speaking to the silver stick, which was glittering now in a sunbeam almost as if it were a beam of light itself. Then she spoke again to Jack:
“Tell me, Jack, what can I do with a wand?”
Again the boy-king began to speak, and the dame stopped him, and again Jack considered. He had heard a great deal in his own country about fairy wands, but he could not remember that the fairies had done anything particular with them, so he gave what he thought was true, but what seemed to him a very stupid answer:
“You can make it point to anything that you please.”
The moment he had said this, shouts of ecstasy filled the hall, and all the fairies clapped their hands with such hurrahs of delight that he blushed for joy.