r you," Taffy went on sturdily, "I
think your grandfather might have more sense than to keep you waiting
out here in the cold, and giving your cough to the whole town!"

"Ha! you do, do you?"

It was not the girl who said this. Taffy swung round, and saw an old
man staring down on him. There was just light enough to reveal that
he had very formidable grey eyes. But Taffy's blood was up.

"Yes, I do," he said, and wondered at himself.

"Ha! Does your father whip you sometimes?"

"No, sir."

"I should if you were my boy. I believe in it. Come, Honoria!"

The child threw a glance at Taffy as she was led away. He could not
be sure whether she took his side or her grandfather's.

That night he had a very queer dream.

His grandmother had lost her lace-pillow, and after searching for
some time, he found it lying out in the square. But the pins and
bobbins were darting to and fro on their own account, at an
incredible rate, and the lace as they made it turned into a singing
beanstalk, and rose and threw out branches all over the sky.
Very soon he found himself climbing among those branches, up and up
until he came to a Palace, which was really the Assize Hall, with a
flight of steps before it and a cannon on either side of the steps.
Within sat a giant, asleep, with his head on the table and his face
hidden; but his neck bulged at the back just like the bandmaster's
during a cornet solo. A harp stood on the table. Taffy caught this
up, and was stealing downstairs with it, but at the third stair the
harp--which had Honoria's head and face--began to cough, and wound up
with a _whoop!_ This woke the giant--he turned out to be Honoria's
grandfather--who came roaring after him. Glancing down below as he
ran, Taffy saw his mother and the bandmaster far below with axes,
hacking at the foot of the beanstalk. He tried to call out and
prevent them, but they kept smiting. And the worst of it was, that
down below, too, his father was climbing into a pulpit, quite as if
nothing was happening. The pulpit grew and became a tower, and his
father kept calling, "Be a tower! Be a tower, like me!"

But Taffy couldn't for the life of him see how to manage it.
The beanstalk began to totter; he felt himself falling, and leapt for
the tower. . . . And awoke in his bed shuddering, and, for the first
time in his life, afraid of the dark. He would have called for his
mother, but just then down by the turret clock in Fore Str