want to be a giant?"

"He hates the giants, but he is making himself one all the same: he
likes their apples! Oh baby, baby, he was just such a darling as you
when we found him!"

"He will be very miserable when he finds himself a giant!"

"Oh, no; he will like it well enough! That is the worst of it."

"Will he hate the Little Ones?"

"He will be like the rest; he will not remember us--most likely will
not believe there are Little Ones. He will not care; he will eat his
apples."

"Do tell me how it will come about. I understand your world so little! I
come from a world where everything is different."

"I do not know about WORLD. What is it? What more but a word in your
beautiful big mouth?--That makes it something!"

"Never mind about the word; tell me what next will happen to Blunty."

"He will wake one morning and find himself a giant--not like you, good
giant, but like any other bad giant. You will hardly know him, but I
will tell you which. He will think he has been a giant always, and will
not know you, or any of us. The giants have lost themselves, Peony says,
and that is why they never smile. I wonder whether they are not glad
because they are bad, or bad because they are not glad. But they can't
be glad when they have no babies! I wonder what BAD means, good giant!"

"I wish I knew no more about it than you!" I returned. "But I try to be
good, and mean to keep on trying."

"So do I--and that is how I know you are good."

A long pause followed.

"Then you do not know where the babies come from into the wood?" I said,
making one attempt more.

"There is nothing to know there," she answered. "They are in the wood;
they grow there."

"Then how is it you never find one before it is quite grown?" I asked.

She knitted her brows and was silent a moment:

"They're not there till they're finished," she said.

"It is a pity the little sillies can't speak till they've forgotten
everything they had to tell!" I remarked.

"Little Tolma, the last before this baby, looked as if she had something
to tell, when I found her under a beech-tree, sucking her thumb, but she
hadn't. She only looked up at me--oh, so sweetly! SHE will never go
bad and grow big! When they begin to grow big they care for nothing but
bigness; and when they cannot grow any bigger, they try to grow fatter.
The bad giants are very proud of being fat."

"So they are in my world," I said; "only they do not say FAT there, they
say RICH.