While Hans was talking, she noticed a little man who looked like a tailor.
"Didn't you start on a journey once," she asked, "with only a piece of cheese and an old hen in your wallet?"
"Yes," he answered; "but that was a good while ago."
"I thought you must be the one. And you fooled the giant, and when he squeezed a stone till water came out of it, you squeezed your cheese till the whey ran out, and he thought your cheese was a stone, and that you squeezed harder than he did. And he never saw through any of your tricks, though I should have thought that even a giant would have suspected. Are all giants so stupid?"
The tailor said that not all of them were so stupid, though fortunately a great many were, and generally when they grew beyond a certain size, something happened to their heads.
"If it weren't for that, Miss Muffet, there would be no room for us common people on the earth. The giants would eat up everything. Now and then there is a young giant like Thumbling who is active and keeps his wits about him. But Thumbling was very little to begin with. Most giants get foolish when they grow up, and then we can put an end to them."
When the talk got upon giants, it was astonishing to see what an eager crowd gathered around the tailor. There were some knights in armor who listened unconcernedly, for they knew that giants could do them no harm; but it was different with the tailors and fishermen and ploughmen. They had suffered so much that they could not speak of a giant without bitterness.
"But aren't there good giants?" asked Miss Muffet.
"I never heard of one," said the tailor, "except Christopher, and he is a saint and learned how to fast. It isn't a question of their being good: the trouble with them is that they are too big. It takes too much to support them. They eat us out of house and home. We can't get along peaceably till we are all more of a size."
They were all of that opinion, and the stories which they applauded were of the kind where a little man gets the better of a big one. Miss Muffet could not object to this, because it was the kind she liked best herself.