The ladies made sport at the description and story of Cupid. But Zelmane could scarce suffer those blasphemies, as she took them, to be read, but humbly besought Pamela she should perform her sister’s request of the other part of the story. “Noble lady,” answered she, beautifying her face with a sweet smiling, and the sweetness of her smiling with the beauty of her face, “since I am born a prince’s daughter, let me not give example of disobedience. My governess will have us draw cuts, and therefore I pray you let us do so: and so perhaps it will light upon you to entertain this company with some story of your own; and it is reason our ears should be willinger to hear, as your tongue is abler to deliver.” “I will think,” answered Zelmane, “excellent princess, my tongue of some value if it can procure your tongue thus much to favour me.” But Pamela pleasantly persisting to have fortune their judge, they set hands, and Mopsa (though at the first for squeamishness going up and down with her head like a boat in a storm,) put to her golden gols[b2-01] among them, and blind fortune, that saw not the colour of them, gave her the pre-eminence: and so being her time {199} to speak, wiping her mouth, as there was good cause, she thus tumbled into her matter. “In time past,” said she, “there was a king, the mightiest man in all his country, that had by his wife the fairest daughter that ever ate pap. Now this king did keep a great house, that everybody might come and take their meat freely. So one day as his daughter was sitting in her window, playing upon a harp as sweet as any rose, and combing her head with a comb all of precious stones, there came in a knight into the court, upon a goodly horse, one hair of gold, and the other of silver; and so the knight casting up his eyes to the window, did fall into such love with her, that he grew not worth the bread he ate; till many a sorry day going over his head, with daily diligence and griefly groans, he won her affection, so that they agreed to run away together. And so in May, when all true hearts rejoice, they stole out of the castle without staying so much as for their breakfast. Now forsooth, as they went together, often fall to kissing one another, the knight told her, he was brought up among the water-nymphs, who had so bewitched him that if he were ever ask’d his name, he must presently vanish away, and therefore charged her upon his blessing, never to ask him what he was, not whether he would. And so a great while she kept his commandment; till once, passing through a cruel wilderness, as dark as pitch, her mouth so watered, that she could not choose but ask him the question. And then, he making the grievousest complaints that would have melted a tree to have heard them, vanish’d quite away: and she lay down, casting forth as pitiful cries as any shriek-owl. But having lain so, wet by the rain, and burnt by the sun, five days and five nights, she got up and went over many a high hill,