"Here the giantess gave a sob which sounded exactly like a wave going flop
into the mouth of a cave up to the roof.

"'Where have you got it now?' she resumed, checking her emotion.

"'Well, Doodlem, I don't mind telling _you_,' said 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.'"

* * * * *

"What funny things you do make up!" said a boy. "How could the giant's
heart be in an eagle's nest, and the giant himself alive and well without
it?"

"Whatever you may think of it, Master Fred, I assure you I did not make it
up. If it ever was made up, no one can tell who did it; for it was written
in the chronicles of Giantland long before one of us was born. It was
quite common," said I, in an injured tone, "for a giant to put his heart
out to nurse, because he did not like the trouble and responsibility of
doing it himself. It was, I confess, a dangerous sort of thing to do.--But
do you want any more of my story or not?"

"Oh! yes, please," cried Frederick, very heartily.

"Then don't you find any more fault with it, or I will stop."