This is a picture of the fifth Adventure. The mark on the ceiling is the awful hole the Giant and Peggy made coming through. The Giant is waving his hand to Cook as they go down. The footman has only just seen the hole, and is showing it to everybody. The housemaid who played dominoes with Peggy is screaming out “Stop them, Cook!” and the scullery maid has sat down on the floor with her hands over her face. Cook is fainting by the table. She had just put a pudding on it for the servants supper. Peggy couldn’t put Nurse into the picture because she wasn’t sure if she was in the kitchen then or not. You do see the Ring, don’t you?
“Do you call this down?” said the Giant laughing. “Come along, get on my hand and wish,” and he laid his hand palm upwards on the hearthrug.
“Wish what?” asked Peggy, putting on her blue dressing-gown and slippers.
“To go down, of course,” said the Giant impatiently. “Has your cold made you deaf?”
“Oh, all right, I wish to go down,” said Peggy, clambering up on to the Giant’s hand. “But it sounds very dull—Gracious! Hold me tight!” for they both at once went right through the nursery floor and into the dining-room below.
“Oh, look!” said Peggy. “What a mess we’ve made of the ceiling. The table’s all covered with bits of it! Oughtn’t we to clear it up?”
“Don’t waste time,” said the Giant. “Come on,” and down through the carpet they went and right into the kitchen.
The servants were all at supper, but Peggy had only just time to catch sight of their terrified faces and to hear their chairs crashing to the floor as they all jumped up, before the Giant went right through that floor too!
After that they went down so fast that her curls flew up in a waving cone above her head, and the Giant’s beard flapped across her face and hid everything. She shut her eyes at last, until—“Open them, we’re down!” said the Giant, and they both flopped on to some long brown grass.
Peggy stared round in astonishment. They were sitting in the middle of a great brown plain, edged all ground with little pointed brown hills rising up to a golden sky. And, “Oh, what ducky little houses!” cried Peggy, for nestling up the sides of every hill were hundreds of tiny brown thatched cottages, each with a dear little garden in front of it, full of vegetables and brightly coloured berries.