The giantess, as has been said, was a vain woman, and she was always thinking how everything could be put to use as something to wear. "I have an idea," she said, suddenly jumping up and bringing a spool of pink silk from her work-box, which was about the size of a Saratoga trunk. "I have heard of ladies wearing live beetles fastened by tiny gold chains to their breast-pins. I believe I can do something of the sort with these little puppets." "But, Madam," begged Vance, in dismay, "you do not seem to understand that these are my own royal rela--" "Now, you be still!" said the giant's wife, playfully, "or I'll pop you into that steaming kettle over there without a single sniff of laughing-gas; and you can't begin to fancy how unpleasant you would find it,--you can't, really." At this Prince Vance shivered, and said very feebly indeed,-- "Please don't hurt them, dear Mrs. Giant; they are very tender." "I shall not hurt them," said the lady, "or at least only enough to make them kick; they are so amusing when they kick." As she talked, she tied bits of silk about the waists of the King and the Queen, and hung them in her ears as children sometimes hang buttons when they pretend to have eardrops. When she had fastened on her strange ear-rings, she made a necklace of the Princesses and Courtiers, and having put it on she began to admire herself in the glass as if she would never be done. After a while, however, she got so sleepy that she could no longer see, and was even too tired to toss her head and make the King and the Queen swing about in her ears. She put her new jewelry back in their box, and picking Vance up put him into a wooden bird-cage on the wall. "Pleasant dreams!" she said cheerfully. And then she too went away to bed. XI Left alone in his high-hung cage, poor Vance was indeed in deep despair. He saw no way out of his troubles, and could not help weeping as he bemoaned his miserable lot. "It is all the fault of that wretched Blue Wizard!" he exclaimed; for it did not occur to him that it was his own bad behavior which brought the Blue Wizard to the palace in the first place. Just at this moment, in a pause between his sobs, the Prince heard a familiar flumping sound on the stone floor below him; and looking down beheld to his surprise his old companion the jelly-fish. "How do you do?" asked the jelly-fish, politely. "I suppose you're not very glad to see me." "Oh, but I am, though!" cried the Prince, not very politely. "I should be glad to see anybody now, no matter who. How did you get by the dogs?" "I flew," replied the creature. "Jelly-fish cannot fly," said the Prince; "so that cannot be true."