So she picked all the prettiest flowers she could find, and strewed them over the door-sill, which they had laid in its right place again; and when the time came for the Giant to come home again, Boots crept under the bed. Just as he was well under, back came the Giant.
Snuff—snuff, went the Giant’s nose. “My eyes and limbs, what a smell of Christian blood there is in here,” said he.
“I know there is,” said the Princess, “for there came a magpie flying with a man’s bone in his bill, and let it fall down the chimney. I made as much haste as I could to get it out, but I daresay it’s that you smell.”
So the Giant held his peace, and said no more about it. A little while after, he asked who it was that had strewed flowers about the door-sill.
“Oh, I, of course,” said the Princess.
“And, pray, what’s the meaning of all this?” said the Giant.
“Ah!” said the Princess, “I’m so fond of you that I couldn’t help strewing them, when I knew that your heart lay under there.”
“You don’t say so,” said the Giant; “but after all it doesn’t lie there at all.”
So when they went to bed again in the evening, the Princess asked the Giant again where his heart was, for she said she would so like to know.