Grandsig looked at it all, quite satisfied. “Oh, children,” she cried, “we have made an Up-and-Down Country!”
The other children looked. Sure enough! It was nothing but hills and hollows, hills and hollows, just as it was at home. And they all danced about and cried, “Hooray! We have made an Up-and-Down Country.”
“There is your mast,” said Wind-and-Weather
“And now,” said Handsig, “let’s run!”
So all the children stepped out from between the mountains they had made, to run back again to the sea.
“But oh!” cried Kildarg, “where is our nice green running-place?”
The children gasped. Instead of their flat grass plot were miles and miles of mudholes, hardening in the sun. As far as they could see, their green meadow was scarred with row after row of great black hollows,—the marks of their twenty-eight running feet.
That was too much for Putzen, and she sat down on one of her mountains and wept a whole lake into a valley. As for the other giantesses, they did very little better, and even Grandsig wept a few giant tears, as she tried to think what they could ever do to get their running-place back again.
“I know!” she cried at last. “We’ll go home and ask father to build us a ship; and then we’ll sail till we find another running-place.”