nd who sometimes laughingly said
she would give him a license, and call her own garden his "preserve,"
because she always allowed him to help himself, whenever he pleased,
to as many of her visitors as he chose, without taking the trouble to
even count them; and in return for such extreme civility, the giant
very frequently invited her to dinner.

Snap-'em-up's favorite sport was to see how many brace of little boys
he could bag in a morning; so, in passing along the streets, he peeped
into all the drawing-rooms, without having occasion to get upon
tiptoe, and picked up every young gentleman who was idly looking out
of the windows, 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, overgrown 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 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 bodies of six other
boys, whom he remembered to have seen fattening in the fairy
Do-nothing's garden, while