The giantess, as has been said, was a vain woman, and she was always thinking how everything could be put to use as something to wear.
"I have an idea," she said, suddenly jumping up and bringing a spool of pink silk from her work-box, which was about the size of a Saratoga trunk. "I have heard of ladies wearing live beetles fastened by tiny gold chains to their breast-pins. I believe I can do something of the sort with these little puppets."
"But, Madam," begged Vance, in dismay, "you do not seem to understand that these are my own royal rela—"
"Now, you be still!" said the giant's wife, playfully, "or I'll pop you into that steaming kettle over there without a single sniff of laughing-gas; and you can't begin to fancy how unpleasant you would find it,—you can't, really."
At this Prince Vance shivered, and said very feebly indeed,—
"Please don't hurt them, dear Mrs. Giant; they are very tender."
"I shall not hurt them," said the lady, "or at least only enough to make them kick; they are so amusing when they kick."
As she talked, she tied bits of silk about the waists of the King and the Queen, and hung them in her ears as children sometimes hang buttons when they pretend to have eardrops. When she had fastened on her strange ear-rings, she made a necklace of the Princesses and Courtiers, and having put it on she began to admire herself in the glass as if she would never be done. After a while, however, she got so sleepy that she could no longer see, and was even too tired to toss her head and make the King and the Queen swing about in her ears. She put her new jewelry back in their box, and picking Vance up put him into a wooden bird-cage on the wall.