never any children?" I asked.

"No; there are never any in the wood for them. They do not love them. If
they saw ours, they would stamp them."

"Is there always the same number of the giants then? I thought, before I
had time to know better, that they were your fathers and mothers."

She burst into the merriest laughter, and said,

"No, good giant; WE are THEIR firsters."

But as she said it, the merriment died out of her, and she looked
scared.

I stopped working, and gazed at her, bewildered.

"How CAN that be?" I exclaimed.

"I do not say; I do not understand," she answered. "But we were here and
they not. They go from us. I am sorry, but we cannot help it. THEY could
have helped it."

"How long have you been here?" I asked, more and more puzzled--in the
hope of some side-light on the matter.

"Always, I think," she replied. "I think somebody made us always."

I turned to my scraping.

She saw I did not understand.

"The giants were not made always," she resumed. "If a Little One doesn't
care, he grows greedy, and then lazy, and then big, and then stupid, and
then bad. The dull creatures don't know that they come from us. Very
few of them believe we are anywhere. They say NONSENSE!--Look at little
Blunty: he is eating one of their apples! He will be the next! Oh! oh!
he will soon be big and bad and ugly, and not know it!"

The child stood by himself a little way off, eating an apple nearly
as big as his head. I had often thought he did not look so good as the
rest; now he looked disgusting.

"I will take the horrid thing from him!" I cried.

"It is no use," she answered sadly. "We have done all we can, and it
is too late! We were afraid he was growing, for he would not believe
anything told him; but when he refused to share his berries, and said
he had gathered them for himself, then we knew it! He is a glutton, and
there is no hope of him.--It makes me sick to see him eat!"

"Could not some of the boys watch him, and not let him touch the
poisonous things?"

"He may have them if he will: it is all one--to eat the apples, and to
be a boy that would eat them if he could. No; he must go to the giants!
He belongs to them. You can see how much bigger he is than when first
you came! He is bigger since yesterday."

"He is as like that hideous green lump in his hand as boy could look!"

"It suits what he is making himself."

"His head and it might change places!"

"Perhaps they do!"

"Does he