In fact, these two Limburgers went on the idea that the bigger the ogre, the less brains he would have, inside his brain pan. It was the way of Dame Nature, the woman argued; that, what she put into a creature’s body, she took out of his skull, whether it were a dragon, a bull, a monkey, or a giant. She didn’t add “a man,” but she probably meant it. Everybody knows that a smart girl, or a nimble princess, was often [[49]]more than a match for a giant, and could usually outwit even a man.
It turned out, just as Heinrich and Grietje expected, and had planned. One day, when the farmer was far out in the fields, pulling up the vines of an old pea-patch, and grubbing up the soil to plant new ones, Grietje, the vrouw, saw Toover Hek, at a distance, coming down the hill, straight for their cabin.
At once, she set the boiler on the fire, to heat up the pea soup. Then she ran out and shooed the chickens, drove the cows into the barn, pulled the goats inside, and locked the door.
Then she poured out the hot, thick, pea soup, into the barrel outside, hung a dipper near by, for invitation, and shut and bolted both leaves of the heck door. Peeping through the keyhole, she could see the big fellow strutting forward. He was puffing, and blowing, after his long tramp.
Toover Hek seemed to sniff the good stuff from a distance. He laid down his big club, which was made of a whole fir tree, and coming up to the pea soup barrel, poked out his tongue and tasted the thick soup. He smacked his lips in glee, making such a noise, that Heinrich, in the distant pea patch, thought it had thundered.
The ogre paid no attention to the ladle; and, it may be, he did not see it; but, with both hands, [[50]]lifting up the whole barrel of soup at once, he gulped it down, as if it were only a cupful. Then rubbing gleefully the region of his swelled out stomach he licked his chops, and soon walked off, without hurting anything, not even a toad.
Heinrich and Grietje were in high spirits over all this, and congratulated each other, on not being inside Toover Hek’s stomach and on their apparent escape from further danger.
But next day Toover Hek came again. Happily, the barrel of thick pea soup was again ready for him, and once more he swallowed it all down; finishing his lunch by thrusting out his tongue, which Grietje declared was a yard long, and giving a thunderous lick to his chops. Then he strode off, to tell his ogre wife, about his good luck.
But she only scolded him, for not bringing home a nice juicy boy, a plump girl, a fat woman, or even a skinny man, tough as he might be; for such a tid-bit would taste better than her every day meal of roots and berries and wild animals. As for her part, she was real hungry. She was so tired of Limburger cheese, as a steady diet. And, besides, she liked the strong smell of it, even less than she used to. She thought he was an auroch or a bear; and at last she called him a wild boar, for not thinking of her, and bringing home to her at least a bucketful of pea soup. How could he forget her! [[51]]
In the home of Heinrich, there was trouble also. How could they keep up the supply of a whole barrel of thick pea soup every day for months?