Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/500

494 at the same hour. Jack finds money enough, which he takes, and then runs back to town. “Look! look!” cries he, showing his money; “my pockets full of gold and silver.” The street boys and swindlers get round him, and he is soon left without a coin.

The next night he spends at the fountain, and tells of his loss in the morning. “Never mind,” says the frog, “kiss me again, and you’ll get plenty.” But the frog is now larger and more hideous, and Jack has scruples which poverty overcomes. Money is got and lost as before, and for the third time Jack goes to the fountain, The frog is now so large as to fill the basin, and hideously swollen up with poison; but, when kissed a third time, a spell is broken, and the frog becomes a beautiful princess, who thanks Jack, and tells him that a charm had kept her in the ugly form he had seen in the fountain, until a “virgin” young man of twenty years should kiss her thrice. She was going to her father, a powerful king of the East, but she intended to marry Jack, who would succeed her father. Meanwhile, he was to return to town, and after a year and a day he must come to the fountain, at eight in the morning, alone and fasting. She would be there, and would take him to her father. He must kiss no other woman, and take care to come fasting, else he should not see her.

He takes a new supply of money, and this time puts it in the keeping of the mistress of an inn where he stays. One of the servant girls took a fancy for him, in spite of his silliness, but he would have nothing to do with her, telling her how he must marry a princess, and stating the precautions he must observe. The girl clasped him round the neck, and kissed him, thus trying to make him break his promise; but Jack still kept to it, and would go on the day appointed to the fountain. She tries in vain to get him misled as to the exact date; and, as he sets out, she slips a pea into his pocket.

Jack arrives too early at the fountain, and, while waiting, finds the pea in his pocket, and thoughtlessly eats it and falls asleep. The princess comes presently, discovers him asleep, and exclaims: “Alas, he has either eaten, or embraced another!” She places in his hands a paper, on which she had written: “Alas, Jack, you have eaten, or perhaps kissed a woman before coming here,