“How much did you get for her?”
“I didn’t get money,” says he, “but I got value.”
“O, Jack! Jack !” says she, “what do you mean?”
“I will soon show you that, mother,” says he, taking the mouse out of his pocket and the harp and the bee and setting all on the floor and when he began to whistle the bee began to play, and the mouse got up on its hind legs and began to dance and jig, and the mother gave such a hearty laugh as she never laughed in her life before. To dancing and jigging herself and Jack fell, and the pots and pans and the wheels and reels began to dance and jig over the floor, and the house jigged also. And when they were tired of this, Jack lifted the harp and the mouse and the bee and put them in his pocket, and his mother she laughed for a long time.
But when she got over that she got very down-hearted and very angry entirely with Jack. “And O, Jack,” she says, “you are a stupid, good-for-nothing fellow. We have neither money nor meat in the house, and here you have lost two of my good cows, and I have only one left now. To-morrow morning,” she says, “you must be up early and take this cow to the fair and sell her. See to get something to lift my heart up.”
“I will do that,” says Jack, says he. So he went to his bed, and early in the morning he was up and turned out the spotty cow and went to the fair.
When Jack got to the fair, he saw a crowd gathered in a ring in the street. “I wonder what they are looking at, anyhow,” says he. He pushed through the crowd, and there he saw the same wee man he had seen before, with a bum-clock; and when he put the bum-clock on the ground, he whistled, and the bum-clock began to dance, and the men, women, and children in the street, and Jack and the spotty cow began to dance and jig also, and everything on the street and about it, the wheels and reels, the pots and pans, began to jig, and the houses themselves began to dance likewise. And when the man lifted the bum-clock and put it in his pocket, everybody stopped jigging and dancing and every one laughed loud. The wee man turned, and saw Jack.
“Jack, my brave boy,” says he, “you will never be right fixed until you have this bum-clock, for it is a very fancy thing to have.”
“O, but,” says Jack, says he, “I have no money.”
“No matter for that,” says the man; “you have a cow, and that is as good as money to me.”