Adela Cathcart, vol 3 | Page 9

"I am afraid I could not tell you a story about a good giant; for
unfortunately all the good giants I ever heard of were very stupid; so
stupid that a story would not make itself about them; so stupid, indeed,
that they were always made game of by creatures not half so big or half
so good; and I don't like such stories. Shall I tell you about the wicked
giant that grew little children in his garden instead of radishes, and then
carried them about in his waistcoat pocket, and ate one as often as he
remembered he had got some?"
"Yes, yes; please do."
"He used to catch little children and plant them in his garden, where
you might see them in rows, with their heads only above ground,
rolling their eyes about, and growing awfully fast. He liked greedy
boys best--boys that ate plum-pudding till they felt as if their belts were
too tight."
Here the fat-faced boy stuck both his hands inside his belt.
"Because he was so fond of radishes," I went on, "he lived just on the
borders of Giantland, where it touched on the country of common
people. Now, everything in Giantland was so big, that the common
people saw only a mass of awful mountains and clouds; and no living
man had ever come from it, as far as anybody knew, to tell what he had
seen in it.
"Somewhere near these borders, on the other side, by the edge of a
great forest, lived a labourer with his wife and a great many children.
One day Tricksey-Wee, as they called her, teased her brother
Buffy-Bob, till he could not bear it any longer, and gave her a box on
the ear. Tricksey-Wee cried; and Buffy-Bob was so sorry and ashamed
of himself, that he cried too, and ran off into the wood. He was so long
gone, that Tricksey-Wee began to be frightened, for she was very fond
of her brother; and she was so sorry that she had first teased him, and
then cried, that at last she ran into the wood to look for him, though

there was more chance of losing herself than of finding him. And,
indeed, so it seemed likely to turn out; for, running on without looking,
she at length found herself in a valley she knew nothing about. And no
wonder; for what she thought was a valley with round, rocky sides, was
no other than the space between two of the roots of a great tree that
grew on the borders of Giantland. She climbed over the side of it, and
right up to what she took for a black, round- topped mountain, far away;
but she soon discovered that it was close to her, and was a hollow place
so great that she could not tell what it was hollowed out of. Staring at it,
she found that it was a doorway; and, going nearer and staring harder,
she saw the door, far in, with a knocker of iron upon it, a great many
yards above her head, and as large as the anchor of a big ship. Now,
nobody had ever been unkind to Tricksey-Wee, and therefore she was
not afraid of anybody. For Buffy-Bob's box on the ear she did not think
worth considering. So, spying a little hole at the bottom of the door,
which had been nibbled by some giant mouse, she crept through it, and
found herself in an enormous hall, as big as if the late Mr. Martin, R.A.,
had been the architect. She could not have seen the other end of it at all,
except for the great fire that was burning there, diminished to a spark in
the distance. Towards this fire she ran as fast as she could, and was not
far from it when something fell before her with a great clatter, over
which she tumbled, and went rolling on the floor. She was not much
hurt, however, and got up in a moment. Then she saw that she had
fallen over something not unlike a great iron bucket. When she
examined it more closely, she discovered that it was a thimble; and
looking up to see who had dropped it, beheld a huge face, with
spectacles as big as the round windows in a church, bending over her,
and looking everywhere for the thimble. Tricksey-Wee immediately
laid hold of it in both her arms, and lifted it about an inch nearer to the
nose of the peering giantess. This movement made the old lady see
where it was, and, her finger popping into it, it vanished from the eyes
of Tricksey-Wee, buried in the folds of a white stocking, like a cloud in
the sky, which Mrs. Giant was busy darning.