No More Learning

Are you bringing them to any other grass? ' 'I am
not,' said Jack, 'but I have a good stick, and whenever they would stop
still or lie down, I give them blows of it, that they jump and leap
over walls and stones and ditches; that's the way to make cows give
plenty of milk. '

And that night at the dinner, the king said, 'I hear no roars at all. '

The next morning the king and the princess were watching at the window
to see what would Jack do when he got to the field. And Jack knew they
were there, and he got a stick, and began to batter the cows, that they
went leaping and jumping over stones, and walls, and ditches. 'There is
no lie in what Jack said,' said the king then.

Now there was a great serpent at that time used to come every seven
years, and he had to get a king's daughter to eat, unless she would
have some good man to fight for her. And it was the princess at the
place Jack was had to be given to it that time, and the king had been
feeding a bully underground for seven years, and you may believe he got
the best of everything, to be ready to fight it.

And when the time came, the princess went out, and the bully with her
down to the shore, and when they got there what did he do, but to tie
the princess to a tree, the way the serpent would be able to swallow
her easy with no delay, and he himself went and hid up in an ivy-tree.
And Jack knew what was going on, for the princess had told him about
it, and had asked would he help her, but he said he would not. But he
came out now, and he put on the suit he had taken from the first giant,
and he came by the place the princess was, but she didn't know him.
'Is that right for a princess to be tied to a tree? ' said Jack. 'It is
not, indeed,' said she, and she told him what had happened, and how the
serpent was coming to take her. 'If you will let me sleep for awhile
with my head in your lap,' said Jack, 'you could wake me when it is
coming.
' So he did that, and she awakened him when she saw the serpent
coming, and Jack got up and fought with it, and drove it back into the
sea. And then he cut the rope that fastened her, and he went away. The
bully came down then out of the tree, and he brought the princess to
where the king was, and he said, 'I got a friend of mine to come and
fight the serpent to-day, where I was a little timorous after being so
long shut up underground, but I'll do the fighting myself to-morrow. '

The next day they went out again, and the same thing happened, the
bully tied up the princess where the serpent could come at her fair
and easy, and went up himself to hide in the ivy-tree. Then Jack put
on the suit he had taken from the second giant, and he walked out, and
the princess did not know him, but she told him all that had happened
yesterday, and how some young gentleman she did not know had come and
saved her. So Jack asked might he lie down and take a sleep with his
head in her lap, the way she could awake him. And all happened the same
way as the day before. And the bully gave her up to the king, and said
he had brought another of his friends to fight for her that day.

The next day she was brought down to the shore as before, and a great
many people gathered to see the serpent that was coming to bring the
king's daughter away. And Jack brought out the suit of clothes he had
brought away from the third giant, and she did not know him, and they
talked as before. But when he was asleep this time, she thought she
would make sure of being able to find him again, and she took out her
scissors and cut off a piece of his hair, and made a little packet of
it and put it away. And she did another thing, she took off one of the
shoes that was on his feet.

And when she saw the serpent coming, she woke him, and he said, 'This
time I will put the serpent in a way that he will eat no more king's
daughters. ' So he took out the sword he had got from the giant, and he
put it in at the back of the serpent's neck, the way blood and water
came spouting out that went for fifty miles inland, and made an end of
him. And then he made off, and no one saw what way he went, and the
bully brought the princess to the king, and claimed to have saved her,
and it is he who was made much of, and was the right-hand man after
that.

But when the feast was made ready for the wedding, the princess took
out the bit of hair she had, and she said she would marry no one but
the man whose hair would match that, and she showed the shoe and said
that she would marry no one whose foot would not fit that shoe as well.