The Queen likewise ordered the thinnest silks that could be gotten to make me new clothes. But even these were thicker than blankets, and very much in my way till I was used to them.
So fond of my company did the Queen become that she could not dine without me. I had a table placed on that at which she ate, just at her left elbow. Glumdalclitch stood on a stool nearby, to assist and take care of me. I had an entire set of silver dishes, which in proportion to the Queen’s were not much bigger than those of a doll’s house. For her Majesty’s knives were twice as long as a scythe, set straight upon the handle, and her spoons, forks, and plates were all on the same scale. I remember the first time I ever saw a dinner-party at Court, when a dozen of these enormous knives and forks were being plied at once, I thought I had never seen so terrible a sight.
But after living among the giants several months, my first horror at their huge size so far wore off that I could not help smiling at myself when the Queen used to place me on her hand before a mirror in which both our figures were reflected together. The contrast was so ridiculous that I really began to think I must have dwindled far below my usual size.
But nothing mortified me so much as the Queen’s dwarf, who was the smallest ever known in the country, being hardly thirty feet high. Seeing at last a creature so far beneath him, he became insolent, and never failed to make some smart remark about my littleness. My only revenge was to call him brother and challenge him to wrestle, which made him not a little angry. One day, at dinner, he became so nettled that raising himself up on the frame of the Queen’s chair, he picked me up by the middle and let me drop into a large silver bowl of cream, and then ran away as fast as he could. I fell in over my head, and if I had not been a good swimmer, I believe I should have been drowned. For Glumdalclitch was at the other end of the room, and the Queen was too frightened to help me. However, my little nurse ran to my relief, and took me out, after I had swallowed more than a quart of cream. I was put to bed, but I was not hurt, except for my clothes, which were ruined.
She could not dine without me
Indeed, I should have lived happily enough in Brobdingnag (for that is the name of the giants’ country), if my littleness had not made me continually the victim of the most absurd accidents. I remember one morning Glumdalclitch set me in my box on a window-sill to give me the air. I opened my windows and sat down at my table to eat a piece of sweet-cake for breakfast, when twenty wasps as big as partridges came flying into the room, droning louder than so many bag-pipes. Some of them seized my cake and carried it piecemeal away. Others flew about my head, deafening me with their noise, until I was afraid I should be stung to death. However, I had the courage to draw my sword, and attack them in the air. Four of them I killed, but the rest got away, and I shut my windows in a hurry.
Another day Glumdalclitch let me walk about by myself on a smooth grass-plot in the garden, when there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail that I was struck to the ground. And when I was down, the hail-stones, which were as big as tennis-balls, gave me such cruel bangs that I could scarcely creep to the shelter of a primrose. As it was, I was so bruised from head to foot that I could not go out for ten days.