"Shush," said Eliza. "Look." And she pointed.
The giant family was squatting down now, and gazing at something on the floor, but Ann couldn't see what it was. Then she heard a piteous voice.
"Oh, please do not play with me any more!" it cried. "I am so tired!" It was the voice of Rebecca.
And far down on the floor, the four children made out the forms of Ivanhoe and Brian de Bois-Guilbert, standing one on each side of Rebecca as though to protect her.
The voice of the female giant now made itself heard.
"Why, the very idea! What impudence. Don't you pay a bit of attention to what the horrid little thing says. You play with them. Play just as hard as you can. Play house with the girl and soldiers with the boys."
"Yes, Mama!" said the child giant. And she picked Rebecca up and started undressing her, and then got tired of that halfway through and put her down in a draft, and took hold of Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert instead, and started marching them up and down the floor in a childish and elementary manner.
Ann and Roger and Eliza looked at each other with indignation.
"It's an insult to the whole order of knighthood!" sputtered Roger.
"I think it's an outrage!" said Eliza.
"What have those giants got there? Dolls?" said Jack.
"No, that's Ivanhoe and Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert," Ann told him. "It's dolls that have got them!"
For of course that was the secret of the Giants' Lair. It was the neglected dollhouse Aunt Katharine had given Ann, that she had never played with, except to plunder its rooms when she was furbishing the Magic City.
"I knew there was something wrong with that dollhouse the minute I saw it," Eliza was saying now to Ann.
"You're right," said Ann. "They're not nice dolls."
The little girl doll (or giant) now decided to play war and make Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert have a deadly combat. She did this in crude fashion by holding one of them in each hand and then knocking them together, hard.
"Sorry, old man," said Bois-Guilbert. "Was that my boot in thy left eye?"
" 'Twas not thy fault, old fellow," said Ivanhoe. "Oops! Did I crack thy crown? Blame not me. Blame this monstrous child."
"I do," said Bois-Guilbert. "I blame her more than I can say. And more of the same from her I will not suffer!" And he drew his sword and attacked the giant child.
Of course to her it was as the prick of a mere pin, but she immediately dropped both knights on the floor (stunning them badly) and began to cry, in the whining tone of all crying dolls.
"Mama," she cried. "It hurt me!"
"Why, the vicious thing," said her mother.
"We won't have any more of that!" said the father giant. "They are not fit pets for you to play with! They should be destroyed!"
At this the child giant began to cry louder, but her mother soothed her. "Wait," she said. "I have an idea. Come with me, and Mama will put some iodine on your finger, and then we will come back and Papa will get his pliers and remove their stings. Then you may play with them just as much as you want to."
And the child giant suffered herself to be led away, her father pausing only long enough to put Ivanhoe and Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert on a table, for safekeeping.
As soon as they'd gone, Eliza said, "Pssst."
Rebecca looked around the room.
"Up here," said Ann.
Rebecca's eyes found the window, high up near the ceiling, and her face lighted. " 'Tis Roger!" she cried. "And the witch and the sorceress with him!"
"Then haply we may hope again," said Ivanhoe.
"Oh Roger," said Bois-Guilbert, humbly. "Thou and I hast crossed swords more than once in days of yore, but fetch us out of this prison and I shall atone for my many sins!"
"Well, for Heaven's sake!" said Eliza, in surprise. "How you've changed, haven't you?"
"We'll save you all if we can," said Roger. "Anyway, we'll try."
"Wait there," said Jack.
"We needs must," said Ivanhoe, peering down from the table. "Other choice offereth there none."
Roger and Ann and Jack and Eliza scrambled out from their perch on the windowsill (for the drop from there was even higher than the drop from the table) and ran around the house looking for a way to the cellar. At last they found some steps leading down, with a door at the bottom.
"For a little girl," said Roger, "the door standeth ever open."
Even as he spoke and even as they looked, the door swung wide of its own accord. But getting to it was another matter.
"Take a giant step," said Eliza, bitterly, looking down at the series of perilous drops before them. But they managed it at last by hanging from the edge of each step with their hands, and then letting go. They arrived at the bottom, whole but somewhat jolted.
And once in the cellar, they faced the problem of how to get Rebecca and Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert down from the table.
"Use thy Elfish magic," suggested Ivanhoe.
"You don't ever seem to understand about that," said Roger. "There isn't any. At least there is, but we can't use it. We're sort of in it!"
But it was vain to attempt to explain. "Come, come," said Ivanhoe. "Thou art merely being modest."
"Think how thou hast saved us in the past," said Rebecca.
"Our fate is in thy hands," added Bois-Guilbert, piously. "Heaven hath sent thee to us in our hour of need."
After that the children had to think of something, and it was Ann who saw the end of a skein of yarn hanging down from the table, where the female giant had been knitting, and it was Jack who had the strength to pull a whole mass of the great floppy stuff down to the floor, and it was Roger and Jack who made the rope ladder, and it was Eliza who looked on and told them how to do it. Ann kept watch at the door.
"Sister Ann, what do you hear?" said Roger.
"Awful screams," said Ann. "They're putting on the iodine."
"Good," said Eliza.
At last the ladder was ready, and Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert, pulling as hard as they could on the other end of the yarn, managed to heave it up to the table.
"Ladies goeth first," said Ivanhoe to Rebecca.
"Nay," said Bois-Guilbert. "One of us strong men should precede her, to aid in her descent and break her fall shouldst she tumble."
"What a goodly thought, old man!" said Ivanhoe. "Go thou, and I shall come third."
"Not at all, my dear fellow," said Bois-Guilbert. "After thee!"
"My, you two certainly are pals all of a sudden," said Roger.
"We have sworn brotherhood," said Ivanhoe. "Brian is a new man. He hath reformed."
"Rebecca hath reformed me," said Bois-Guilbert. "It helped to pass the time. Besides, what is chivalry for, if two knights do not unite against a common enemy? Old Wilfred and I have been through thick and thin together in this dungeon."
"There is a great deal of good in old Brian," said Ivanhoe. "We are ... What was the word Roger hath used?"
"We are pals," said Bois-Guilbert, gripping Ivanhoe by the hand.
"Good," said Eliza. "Now let's hurry."
But which of the two knights would finally have gone down the yarn ladder first will never be known. For now heavy feet were heard on the stairs, and the three smiling giants appeared in the doorway. They stood looking around the room.
"Someone has been leaving the cellar door open," said the father giant, crossing to shut it.
"Someone has been snarling up my knitting," said the mother giant, seizing the yarn ladder and pulling it apart beyond repair.
"Someone has been trying to steal my playthings," cried the little-girl giant, "and there they are now!" And she pointed at Roger and Jack and Ann and Eliza.
"Well, well," said her father. "More pets for you to play with. Aren't you the lucky girl?" And he leaned over to pick up Ann.
Ann's heart quailed, though she tried not to let it. And Eliza stepped forward courageously.
"Don't you touch her!" she said. "You'll be sorry! She may not look it, but she's a
mighty sorceress. It just so happens I'm a pretty powerful witch, myself. Beware!"
"And I," said Roger, drawing himself up to his full small height, "am the great Roger. You've probably heard of me."
"No," said the giant, "I haven't. And what's more, I don't believe you." And he leaned over them again with his menacing smile.
"Help!" cried Eliza, in sudden alarm. "Jack! Use your sword!"
Jack brandished the blade King Richard had given him.
The giant's face retreated quicker than it had advanced. "What did you say?" he said.
"I told him to use his sword," said Eliza. "He will, too."
"But what was that you called him?" said the giant.
"Jack," said Eliza. "That's his name."
The child giant screamed. The mother giant turned pale.
"I don't believe you," said the father giant again, but his voice trembled. "If that's Jack, where's his beans?"
This time it was Roger who understood. "He's not that Jack," he said. "He's the other one. He's Jack the..."
"Don't say it!" cried the giantess, clutching her offspring to her. "Not before the child!" The three giants gazed at Jack in terror.
"What's the matter with them?" said Jack.
"They think you're Jack the Giant Killer," said Ann.
"Okay," said Jack. "What do I do? Kill them?"
Roger looked doubtful. "Do you suppose we have to?"
"Think of the blood," said Ann. "So much of it!"
"Only it'd probably be sawdust," said Roger.
"And they'd probably go right on smiling," said Eliza. "I couldn't stand it."
While this discussion was going on, the father giant had been edging toward the table. Now he suddenly caught up Ivanhoe and Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert and held them high in the air.
"I'll teach you to come invading people's homes with your nasty murdering friends," he said. "If he doesn't put away his sword, I'll smash them to smithereens."
Ann and Roger and Eliza gazed up in horror at their captive friends. Jack was so startled that he dropped his sword on the floor.
"Pay no heed," called Rebecca to Jack, from somewhere up near the ceiling, which was of skyscraper height. "Take up thy blade!"
"If we die, 'twill be in a good cause," said Ivanhoe.
"I have been a miserable wretch," said Bois-Guilbert, his voice muffled by the giant's hand, but with a sincere ring in it. "But at least I repented before 'twas too late."
"Wait," said Roger to the giant. "Can't we talk this over sensibly? Maybe we could work out some kind of truce."
"What makes you so mean?" said Ann. "What have we ever done to you?"
"Well, really! Well may you ask," said the mother doll (or giant). "It isn't that we mind being played with day and night and wheeled in baby carriages till it's monotonous. Oh no! Nor being undressed and put to bed when we aren't sleepy, and dropped on our heads and left out in the rain, either! That's just part of the normal scheme of things. It's what we were made for. We even enjoy it, in a way. It makes us feel Somebody Cares! But you"—her voice trembled and she sounded hurt—"never played with us at all!"
Ann blushed and felt ashamed of herself but Eliza was scornful. "I certainly didn't," she said. "I wouldn't stoop to it."
"Very well," said the mother giant. "Very well. That's your privilege. But when it comes"—and her voice swelled with righteous wrath—"to invading our privacy and spoiling our interior decoration and cutting up the very clothes off our back, why then I say it's time to draw the line, and it's no wonder we're striking back! And don't pretend you didn't do it," she went on, pointing at Ann's hand with the birthstone ring with the tiny agate, "because I'd know that hand anywhere! And that"—she pointed at Eliza's hand with the bitten fingernails—"is the hand that helps it!"
"Only now they've got little," said the child giant.
"And now," said the father, snatching up Jack's sword from the floor, "they're in our power."
The giant family glowered down at Ann and Eliza.
"What have you done with my red velvet train?" said the mother giant.
"My coattails?" said the father giant.
"My side-curls?" said the little girl giant.
"My fur coat? The best bath mat? The drawing room armchair? The kitchen curtains? The roses from the quilt?" said all three.
Ann blushed guiltily. "I'm sorry," she said.
"We didn't think you'd mind," said Eliza.
"Mind?" said the mother giant. "Mind? Have we no feelings? Have we no hearts? Are we things of wood and china?"
"Give us back what you stole," said the father giant. "Then maybe we can talk of truces."
"We can't," said Ann, unhappily.
"We don't have them anymore," said Eliza.
"Then bid your friends good-bye forever," said the giant. And again he raised Ivanhoe and Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert in the air, to dash them to pieces on the floor.
"Wait!" cried Ann. "We'll find them for you! We'll bring them back!"
"We'll go on a quest!" said Eliza.
But there was an interruption. "Ah, what does it matter?" said Jack, forgetting for a moment that he had shrunk to toy-soldier size and remembering only his boyish scorn for girls' playthings. "They're just a lot of dolls, anyway!"
"Don't!" cried Roger and Ann and Eliza in one voice, gripped by the same horrid fear. But they were too late.
For these words proved just as powerful as others that shall be nameless, and the mist rolled down, and the giants and Ivanhoe and Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert started growing transparent, and the last thing Roger and Ann and Jack and Eliza saw before everything disappeared completely was the whole wall of the Giant's Lair sort of swinging out and away from them, as though they were in an earthquake.
The next they knew, they were standing in Roger's room looking down at an open dollhouse. Inside the dollhouse were a father doll and a mother doll and a little girl doll and the small figures of Ivanhoe and Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert, lying where the children's mother had put them when she picked up, three days ago.
"Oh!" cried Ann, looking at Jack with a face of utter displeasure. "You might know some boy would spoil everything!"
"How was I to know?" said Jack. He turned to Roger. "That's not what you said the Words of Power were."
"It's the same principle," said Roger. "You might have guessed. I did."
"I don't see how," said Jack.
"Maybe he used his head," snapped Eliza. "And this was supposed to be my adventure and you spoiled it before I got to be leader at all, hardly."
There was a silence.
"Robin Hood was keen, though," said Jack.
The others looked at him coldly. "And now he's still waiting at the edge of the wood for us to come back, and maybe we never will!" said Ann.
"Ivanhoe and Rebecca and that Brian'll be killed, of course," said Eliza, joining in in that spirit of making everything as gloomy as possible that can be such a pleasure at such times.
"And the Normans'll win the siege, and the whole thing'll be ruined," said Roger.
"I don't see that it's my fault at all," said Jack. "You can't expect an experiment to come out right if people don't give you the right facts."
"Oh, leave him alone," said Eliza, pityingly. "He's too old to know better."
And they did.
7. The Quest
"Now then," said Eliza. "What'll we do?"
It was the next day, and hope reigned again in the hearts of the four children.
"Well, the first thing," said Ann, "is to remember all the things we took out of the dollhouse, and find them and put them back."
Eliza shook her head. "That's too easy. Better wait till the magic starts again and go on a quest, like I said."
"But we'll never find all the things when we're small," Ann wailed.
Roger was firm. "Eliza's right. Any other way would be just sissy and cheating."
"But Ann's partly right, too," said Jack. "We can't move all that furniture if we're
soldier-size."
"We'll have to compromise," said Roger.
"What's that?" said Ann.
The other three proceeded to show her what it was by taking Prince John's throne from behind the sliding fire screen and putting it back in the dollhouse, where it became the best parlor armchair once more. And all the other furniture that would be too heavy to move, later, they put back now, but the smaller things they left where they were, to be quested for when the magic began.
"I get to plan the quest," said Eliza. "Last time doesn't count as my turn at all. The door stood open for Ann, and Jack nearly was a giant killer, and Roger was the great Roger. I hardly did anything."
And the others all saw that to agree would be the way of much less resistance.
"We ought to make a list," Eliza went on, "of all the things we have to find, and take it along, to prod our sluggish brains."
"I'll get my notebook," said Ann.
"Can we take things?" Roger wondered. "We never have."
"We take the clothes we're wearing," said Eliza, "if that signifies."
"And I took my camera," said Jack.
"You did? I never noticed," said Eliza.
"I forgot about it myself," said Jack. "I only took that one picture of Robin Hood, and then I forgot all about developing that."
"Let's go do it now," said Roger. And the two boys departed for the darkroom while Ann and Eliza worked on the list.
"What did we use the father giant's coattails for?" Eliza tried to remember.
"I can't think," said Ann. "I know where the child giant's side-curls went, though." She giggled at the thought of where they had gone. Then she ran to get her notebook, but she couldn't find a pencil (as who ever can?) and the talk turned to other matters.
Pretty soon Roger and Jack came back and reported that the picture of Robin Hood hadn't turned out.
"It must have been overexposed," said Jack, but Roger thought there might be more to it than that.
And so the rest of that day and all the next one passed in fun and games and harmless ploys, and always the fateful third night drew ever nearer. And as to what it might bring, Eliza decreed that they should try not to even think about it. Because planning had never paid in the past, nor meddling, either.