George rubbed his eyes. Yes, there was no doubt about it. Unless he had slipped through a hole in the ground or flown away, no one could tell what had become of him. He turned to Alexander, and was just going to ask him what they should do when he saw the great round face of the giant appear, as if it were floating in the air.
"This is a funny place," thought George. "One never knows what is going to happen next. Where did the poor old giant come from, I wonder."
"Hullo!" said the giant as he caught sight of them. "Hullo! Here you are at last. I've been waiting for you. They've all gone, I suppose."
"Yes, they've gone. How did you get here?" asked George.
"Oh, I'm just standing down in the valley below. I can put my head over the edge of the hill, and it's more comfortable for talking. Look over!"
George peeped over the edge of the cliff, and there, sure enough, below them in the valley were the great feet belonging to the giant. They looked, so far off were they, as if they must belong to some one else.
It was quite a long time before the giant spoke again. "Let us talk. You do want to talk, don't you? I was just thinking over one or two stories to tell you—not the whole of my life, you know—that's very long, as I told you before. It's a queer thing about stories. They grow just as you and I do. Every time I tell a story I find that it has grown longer. Some of them, so I've been told, have no end."
"Oh," said George, "but they must have an end, however long they are! They generally end with 'and so they married and lived happily ever after.'"
"I never heard that kind of story. It couldn't end that way if you were telling a story about a sausage. Sausages don't marry, do they?" And the giant laughed until all the echoes joined in with "Ha, ha! Ho, ho!"
"Is the story you are going to tell me about a sausage?" asked George.