When Jack’s slave saw this, she took the little creature on her knee, and said to her, “How comes it that you are not like your companions?”
And she answered, in a pretty lisping voice, “It’s because Jack kissed me.”
“Even so it must be,” answered the slave; “the love of a mortal works changes indeed. It is not often that we win anything so precious. Here, master, let her sit on your knee sometimes, and take care of her, for she cannot now take the same care of herself that others of her race are capable of.”
So Jack let little Mopsa sit on his knee; and when he was tired of admiring his slave, and wondering at the respect with which the other two fairies treated her, and at their cleverness in getting water-lilies for her, and fanning her with feathers, he curled himself up in the bottom of the boat with his own little favourite, and taught her how to play at cat’s-cradle.
When they had been playing some time, and Mopsa was getting quite clever at the game, the lovely slave said, “Master, it is a long time since you spoke to me.”
“And yet,” said Jack, “there is something that I particularly want to ask you about.”
“Ask it, then,” she replied.
“I don’t like to have a slave,” answered Jack; “and as you are so clever, don’t you think you can find out how to be free again?”
“I am very glad you asked me about that,” said the fairy woman. “Yes, master, I wish very much to be free; and as you were so kind as to give the most valuable piece of real money you possessed in order to buy me, I can be free if you can think of anything that you really like better than that half-crown, and if I can give it you.”
“Oh, there are many things,” said Jack. “I like going up this river to Fairyland much better.”