"Well, I don't know," said her husband. "About ten or eleven hundred, I
suppose."
"That was too many for you," said his wife. "And I think you had better
go to bed, and I will bring you something to make you feel better."
So the Giant went to bed, and as he slowly ascended the stairs, he
winked to himself with his right eye. And his wife, she went into the
kitchen, and winked to herself with her left eye.
After a while she came up to the Giant, and brought a barrel of hot
chamomile tea; and when he had drank it all, she tucked him in, nice and
warm, and the next morning he felt as well as ever.
TING-A-LING'S VISIT TO TUR-I-LI-RA.
One pleasant sunny day, the Giant Tur-il-i-ra was lying on his back on
the grass, under some great trees, in a wood near the palace of the
King.
His feet were high above the rest of his body, resting in the crotch of
a great oak-tree, and he lay with his vest open and his hat off, idly
sucking the pith from a young sapsago-tree that he had just broken off.
Near him, on the top of a tall bulrush, sat the little fairy
Ting-a-ling. They had been talking together for some time, and
Tur-il-i-ra said, "Ting-a-ling, you must come and see me. You have never
been to my castle except when you came for the good of somebody else.
Come now for yours and mine, and stay at least a week. We will have a
gay old time. Will you come?"
"I will," cried the little fairy, in a voice as clear as the chirp of a
cricket. "I'll come whenever you say so."
"Let it be to-morrow, then," said the Giant. "Shall I fetch you?"
"O no," said Ting-a-ling; "I will come on my blue butterfly. You have no
idea how fast he flies. I do believe he could go to your castle nearly
as fast as you could yourself."
"All right," said Tur-il-i-ra, rising. "Come as you please, but be sure
you come to stay."
Then the Giant got up, and he shook himself, and buttoned his vest, and
put on his hat, and as he had thin boots on, he told Ting-a-ling he was
going to see if he couldn't take the river at one jump. So, tightening
his belt, and going back for a good run, he rushed to the river bank,
and with a spring like the jerk of five mad elephants, he bounded
across. But the opposite bank was not hard enough to resist the
tremendous fall of so many tons of giant as came upon it when
Tur-il-i-ra's feet touched its edge; and it gave way, and his feet went
up and his back came down, and into the river, like a ship dropping out
of the sky, went the mighty Giant. The splash was so great that the
whole air, for a minute or two, was full of water and spray, and
Ting-a-ling could see nothing at all. When things had become visible
again, there was Tur-il-i-ra standing up to the middle of his thighs in
the channel of the river, and brushing from his eyes and his nose the
water that trickled from him like little brooks.
"Hel-l-o-o-o!" cried Ting-a-ling. "Are you hurt?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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