et hold of Perseus. But he took good
care to keep out of their reach.

"My respectable dames," said he--for his mother had taught him always to
use the greatest civility--"I hold your eye fast in my hand and shall
keep it safely for you until you please to tell me where to find these
Nymphs. The Nymphs, I mean, who keep the enchanted wallet, the flying
slippers and the what is it?--the helmet of invisibility."

"Mercy on us, sisters! what is the young man talking about?" exclaimed
Scarecrow, Nightmare and Shakejoint, one to another, with great
appearance of astonishment. "A pair of flying slippers, quoth he! His
heels would quickly fly higher than his head if he was silly enough to
put them on. And a helmet of invisibility! How could a helmet make him
invisible, unless it were big enough for him to hide under it? And an
enchanted wallet! What sort of a contrivance may that be, I wonder? No,
no, good stranger! we can tell you nothing of these marvelous things.
You have two eyes of your own and we have but a single one amongst us
three. You can find out such wonders better than three blind old
creatures like us."

Perseus, hearing them talk in this way, began really to think that the
Gray Women knew nothing of the matter; and, as it grieved him to put
them to so much trouble, he was just on the point of restoring their eye
and asking pardon for his rudeness in snatching it away. But Quicksilver
caught his hand.

"Don't let them make a fool of you!" said he. "These Three Gray Women
are the only persons in the world that can tell you where to find the
Nymphs, and unless you get that information you will never succeed in
cutting off the head of Medusa with the snaky locks. Keep fast hold on
the eye and all will go well."

As it turned out, Quicksilver was in the right. There are but few things
that people prize so much as they do their eyesight; and the Gray Women
valued their single eye as highly as if it had been half a dozen, which
was the number they ought to have had. Finding that there was no other
way of recovering it, they at last told Perseus what he wanted to know.
No sooner had they done so than he immediately and with the utmost
respect clapped the eye into the vacant socket in one of their
foreheads, thanked them for their kindness and bade them farewell.
Before the young man was out of hearing, however, they had got into a
new dispute, because he happened to have given the eye to Scarecrow, who
had alread