Verena in the Midst: A Kind of a StoryLucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
General
Verena in the Midst: A Kind of a Story
Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Epistolary fiction; Invalids -- Fiction
The giant slept for three weeks at a time and two days after he woke his
breakfast was brought to him, consisting of bright brown horses sprinkled
on his bread and butter. Besides his boots the giant had a pair of
shoes, and in one of them his wife lived when she was at home: on other
occasions she lived in the other shoe. She was a sensible practical kind
of woman, with two wooden legs and a clothes-horse, but in other respects
not rich. The wooden legs were kept pointed at the ends, in order that
if the giant were dissatisfied with his breakfast he might pick up any
stray people that were within reach, using his wife as a fork. This
annoyed the inhabitants of the district, so they built their church in
a south-westerly direction from the castle, behind the giant’s back,
that he might not be able to pick them up as they went in. But those who
stayed outside to play pitch-and-toss were exposed to great danger and
sufferings.
Now, in the village there were two brothers of altogether different
tastes and dispositions, and talents and peculiarities and
accomplishments, and in this way they were discovered not to be the same
person. The elder of them was most marvellously good at singing and could
sing the Old Hundredth an old hundred times without stopping. Whenever he
did this he stood on one leg and tied the other round his neck to avoid
catching cold and spoiling his voice; but the neighbours fled. And he
was also a rare hand at making guava dumplings out of three cats and a
shoehorn, which is an accomplishment seldom met with. But his brother was
a more meagre magnanimous person, and his chief accomplishment was to eat
a wagon-load of hay overnight, and wake up thatched in the morning.
The whole interest of this story depends upon the fact that the giant’s
wife’s clothes-horse broke in consequence of a sudden thaw, being made
of organ pipes. So she took off her wooden legs and stuck them in the
ground, tying a string from the top of one to the top of the other, and
hung out her clothes to dry on that. Now this was astutely remarked by
the two brothers, who therefore went up in front of the giant after he
had his breakfast. The giant called out “Fork! fork!” but his wife,
trembling, hid herself in the more recondite toe of the second shoe. Then
the singing brother began to sing: but he had not taken into account the
pious disposition of the giant, who instantly joined in the psalm, and
this caused the singing brother to burst his head off, but, as it was
tied by the leg, he did not lose it altogether.
But the other brother, being well thatched on account of the quantity of
hay he had eaten overnight, lay down between the great toe of the giant,
and the next, and wriggled. So the giant, being unable to bear tickling
in the feet, kicked out in an orthopodal manner: whereupon the castle
broke and he fell backwards, and was impaled upon the sharp steeple of
the church. So they put a label on him on which was written “Nupides
Giganteus.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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