"Where have you got it now?" she resumed, checking her emotion. "Well, Doodlem, I don't mind telling _you_," answered the giant, soothingly. "The great she-eagle has got it for a nest egg. She sits on it night and day, and thinks she will bring the greatest eagle out of it that ever sharpened his beak on the rocks of Mount Skycrack. I can warrant no one else will touch it while she has got it. But she is rather capricious, and I confess I am not easy about it; for the least scratch of one of her claws would do for me at once. And she _has_ claws." I refer anyone who doubts this part of my story to certain chronicles of Giantland preserved among the Celtic nations. It was quite a common thing for a giant to put his heart out to nurse, because he did not like the trouble and responsibility of doing it himself; although I must confess it was a dangerous sort of plan to take, especially with such a delicate viscus as the heart. All this time Buffy-Bob and Tricksey-Wee were listening with long ears. "Oh!" thought Tricksey-Wee, "if I could but find the giant's cruel heart, wouldn't I give it a squeeze!" The giant and giantess went on talking for a long time. The giantess kept advising the giant to hide his heart somewhere in the house; but he seemed afraid of the advantage it would give her over him. "You could hide it at the bottom of the flour-barrel," said she. "That would make me feel chokey," answered he. "Well, in the coal-cellar. Or in the dust-hole--that's the place! No one would think of looking for your heart in the dust-hole." "Worse and worse!" cried the giant. "Well, the water-butt," suggested she. "No, no; it would grow spongy there," said he. "Well, what _will_ you do with it?" "I will leave it a month longer where it is, and then I will give it to the Queen of the Kangaroos, and she will carry it in her pouch for me. It is best to change its place, you know, lest my enemies should scent it out. But, dear Doodlem, it's a fretting care to have a heart of one's own to look after. The responsibility is too much for me. If it were not for a bite of a radish now and then, I never could bear it." Here the giant looked lovingly towards the row of little boys by the fire, all of whom were nodding, or asleep on the floor. "Why don't you trust it to me, dear Thunderthump?" said his wife. "I would take the best possible care of it." "I don't doubt it, my love. But the responsibility would be too much for _you_. You would no longer be my darling, light-hearted, airy, laughing Doodlem. It would transform you into a heavy, oppressed woman, weary of life--as I am." The giant closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep. His wife got his stockings, and went on with her darning. Soon the giant's pretence became reality, and the giantess began to nod over her work. "Now, Buffy," whispered Tricksey-Wee, "now's our time. I think it's moonlight, and we had better be off. There's a door with a hole for the cat just behind us."