“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.