But the King only smiled at Jack, an’ says he, “Jack, that was a wonderful horse entirely, an’ no mistake.”
Then he took Jack with him out into the garden for his second trial, an’ showed him a beeskep, the size of the biggest rick of hay ever Jack had seen; an’ every bee in the skep was the size of a thrush an’ queeny bee as big as a jackdaw.
“Jack,” says the King, says he, “isn’t them wondherful bees? I’ll warrant ye, ye never saw anything like them?”
“Oh, they’re middlin’—middlin’ fairish,” says Jack—“for this counthry. But they’re nothin’ at all to the bees we have in Donegal. If one of our bees was flying across the fields,” says Jack, “and one of your bees happened to come in its way, an’ fall into our bee’s eye our bee would fly to the skep, an’ ax another bee to take the mote out of his eye.”
“Do you tell me so, Jack?” says the King. “You must have great monsthers of bees.”
“Monsthers,” says Jack. “Ah, yer Highness, monsthers is no name for some of them. I remimber,” says he, “a mighty great breed of bees me father owned. They were that big that when my father’s new castle was a-buildin’ (in the steddin’ of the old one which he consaived to be too small for a man of his mains), and when the workmen closed in the roof, it was found there was a bee inside, an’ the hall door not bein’ wide enough, they had to toss the side wall to let it out. Then the queeny bee—ah! she was a wonderful baste entirely!” says Jack. “Whenever she went out to take the air she used to overturn all the ditches and hedges in the country; the wind of her wings tossed houses and castles; she used to swallow whole flower gardens; an’ one day she flew against a ridge of mountains nineteen thousand feet high and knocked a piece out from top to bottom, an’ it’s called Barnesmore Gap to this day. This queeny bee was a great trouble an’ annoyance to my father, seein’ all the harm she done the naybours round about; and once she took it in her head to fly over to England, an’ she created such mischief an’ disolation there that the King of Englan’ wrote over to my father if he didn’t come immediately an’ take home his queeny bee that was wrackin’ an’ ruinin’ all afore her he’d come over himself at the head of all his army, and wipe my father off the face of the airth. So my father ordhered me to mount our wondherful big horse that I tould ye about, an’ that could go nineteen mile at every step, an’ go over to Englan’ an’ bring home our queeny bee. An’ I mounted the horse an’ started, an’ when I come as far as the sea I had to cross to get over to Englan’, I put the horse’s two fore feet into my hat, an’ in that way he thrashed the sea dry all the way across an’ landed me safely. When I come to the King of Englan’ he had to supply me with nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand men an’ ninety-nine thousand mile of chains an’ ropes to catch the queeny bee an’ bind her. It took us nine years to catch her, nine more to tie her, an’ nine years and nine millions of men to drag her home, an’ the King of Englan’ was a beggar afther from that day till the day of his death. Now what do ye think of that bee?” says Jack, thinkin’ he had the King this time sure enough.
But the King was a cuter one than Jack took him for, an’ he only smiled again, an’ says he,—
“Well, Jack, that was a wondherful great queeny bee entirely.”
Next, for poor Jack’s third an’ last chance the King took him to show him a wondherful field of beans he had, with every bean-stalk fifteen feet high, an’ every bean the size of a goose’s egg.
“Well, Jack,” says the King, says he, “I’ll engage ye never saw more wondherful bean-stalks than them?”