s you take the trouble of
killing them to-night? Will it not be time enough to-morrow morning?"

"Hold your prating," replied the Ogre; "they will grow tender by being
kept a little while after they are killed."

"But," said this wife, "you have got so much meat in the house
already; here is a calf, two sheep, and half a pig."

"True," said the Ogre, "so give them all a good supper, that they may
not get lean, and then send them to bed."

The good creature was quite glad at this. She gave them plenty for
their supper, but the poor children were so terrified that they could
not eat a bit.

The Ogre sat down to his wine, very much pleased with the thought of
giving his friends such a dainty dish: this made him drink rather more
than common, and he was soon obliged to go to bed himself. Now the
Ogre had seven daughters, who were all very young like Hop-o'-my-Thumb
and his brothers. These young Ogresses had fair skins, because they
fed on raw meat like their father; but they had small gray eyes, quite
round, and sunk in their heads, hooked noses, wide mouths, and very
long, sharp teeth, standing a great way off each other. They were too
young as yet to do much mischief; but they showed that if they lived
to be as old as their father they would grow quite as cruel as he was,
for they took pleasure already in biting young children and sucking
their blood. The Ogresses had been put to bed very early that night;
they were all in one bed, which was very large, and every one of them
had a crown of gold on her head. There was another bed of the same
size in the room, and in this the Ogre's wife put the seven little
boys, and then went to bed herself along with her husband.

Now Hop-o'-my-Thumb was afraid that the Ogre would wake in the night,
and kill him and his brothers while they were asleep. So he got out of
bed in the middle of the night as softly as he could, took off all his
brothers' nightcaps and his own, and crept with them to the bed that
the Ogre's daughters were in; he then took off their crowns, and put
the nightcaps on their heads instead; next he put the crowns on his
brothers' heads and his own, and got into bed again; expecting, after
this, that, if the Ogre should come, he would take him and his
brothers for his own children. Everything turned out as he wished. The
Ogre waked soon after midnight, and began to be very sorry that he had
put off killing the boys till the morning; so he jumped out of bed,
and