and even a few occasionally who were playing truant from
school, but busy children seemed always somehow quite out of his reach.

One day, when Master No-book felt even more lazy, more idle, and more
miserable than ever, he lay beside a perfect mountain of toys and cakes,
wondering what to wish for next, and hating the very sight of everything
and everybody. At last he gave so loud a yawn of weariness and disgust,
that his jaw very nearly fell out of joint, and then he sighed so
deeply, that the giant Snap-'em-up heard the sound as he passed along
the road after breakfast, and instantly stepped into the garden, with
his glass at his eye, to see what was the matter. Immediately on
observing a large, fat, over-grown boy, as round as a dumpling, lying on
a bed of roses, he gave a cry of delight, followed by a gigantic peal of
laughter, which was heard three miles off, and picking up Master No-book
between his finger and his thumb, with a pinch that very nearly broke
his ribs, he carried him rapidly towards his own castle, while the fairy
Do-nothing laughingly shook her head as he passed, saying, "That little
man does me great credit!--he has only been fed for a week, and is as
fat already as a prize ox! What a dainty morsel he will be! When do you
dine to-day, in case I should have time to look in upon you?"

On reaching home, the giant immediately hung up Master No-book by the
hair of his head, on a prodigious hook in the larder, having first taken
some large lumps of nasty suet, forcing them down his throat to make him
become still fatter, and then stirring the fire, that he might be
almost melted with heat, to make his liver grow larger. On a shelf quite
near, Master No-book perceived the dead bodies of six other boys, whom
he remembered to have seen fattening in the fairy Do-nothing's garden,
while he recollected how some of them had rejoiced at the thoughts of
leading a long, useless, idle life, with no one to please but
themselves.

The enormous cook now seized hold of Master No-book, brandishing her
knife, with an aspect of horrible determination, intending to kill him,
while he took the trouble of screaming and kicking in the most desperate
manner, when the giant turned gravely round and said, that as pigs were
considered a much greater dainty when whipped to death than killed in
any other way, he meant to see whether children might not be improved by
it also; therefore she might leave that great hog of a boy til