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“Come up,” he invited the boy, “and have a seat on my shoulder.”

Marmaduke looked up and hesitated, for the distance up to that shoulder was so great. He might as well have tried to climb a mountain rising straight up in the air. But the Giant helped him out.

“Don’t be scared,” he said, “I’ll give you a boost.”

And he reached down his mighty hand and placed it under the seat of Marmaduke’s trousers. The little boy looked no bigger than the kernel of a tiny hazelnut rolling around in the big palm. But very gently the big fingers set him on the tall shoulder, way, way above the bottom of that pit, but very safe and sound. Marmaduke grabbed tight hold of one of the hairs of the Giant’s beard to keep from falling off. He had hard work, too, for each hair of that beard was as stout and as thick as the rope of a ship.

“Kind of cosey perch, ain’t it?” asked the Giant.

Now it didn’t strike Marmaduke as quite that, when he had such hard work to hold on, and he was so far from the ground, but nevertheless he answered,–

“Y-y-yes, s-s-sir.”

His lip quivered like the lemon jelly in the spoon, that time he was so sick. If he had fallen from that shoulder, he would have dropped as far as if he had been thrown from the top gilt pinnacle of the Woolworth Building. And so tremendous was the Giant’s voice that when he talked the whole earth seemed to shake, and Marmaduke shook with it as if he were blown about by a mighty wind.

“Now,” the Giant was saying in that great voice like thunder, “you want to know what I’m heating up this furnace for?”

“Y-y-yes,” replied Marmaduke, his lips still trembling like the lemon jelly.

“You see it’s this way,” the Giant tried to explain, “my old friend, Mr. Sun, keeps the outside of the Earth warm, but I keep the inside nice and comfy.”

It seemed strange to hear the Giant use that word, “comfy.” It is a word that always seems to sound small, and the Giant was so huge.

“I haven’t seen my chum, Mr. Sun, for quite a spell,” the Giant went on, “let me see–it was the other day when I last saw him.”

“What day?” asked Marmaduke, “last Sunday?”

“Oh, no, a little before that. I guess it was about a million years ago.”

“A million! Whew!” Marmaduke whistled. “That was quite a long time.”

“Oh, no,” responded the Giant, “not as long as you think. No more than three shakes of a lamb’s tail–when you come to look at it right.”

“But where do you get all the coal?” was Marmaduke’s next question. “I should think you’d use it all up quick, you put on such big shovelsful.”

“See there,” the Giant said, for answer pointing in at the sides of the pit. Little tunnels ran from the sides into the dark Earth. And in the tunnels were little gnomes, with stocking caps on their heads, and they were trundling little wheelbarrows back and forth. The wheelbarrows were full of coal, and when they had dumped the coal on the Giant’s pile they would hurry back for more. In their foreheads were little lights, and in the dark tunnels of the Earth these shone like fireflies or little lost stars.

“Would you like to see a trick?” asked the Giant.

“A card trick?” asked Marmaduke in turn, rather hoping it was.

The Giant laughed and looked down at his fingers. Each one was as big as a thick flagpole thirty feet long.

“What would these fingers be doing, playing cards?” he said. “Pshaw! I couldn’t play even Old Maid–or Casino.”

“I’ll show you how,” said Marmaduke eagerly, and the Giant put him on a shelf of the Earth close to his head. Then Marmaduke took from his pocket a little pack of cards and shuffled them. He explained the rules very carefully–Old Maid it was–and then dealt them to Ping Pong, Sing Song and Ah See, for they joined in the game, and to the Giant. In those thirty-foot fingers the tiny cards looked like little bits of pink confetti. The Giant seemed to like the game, but Marmaduke beat the three little Chinamen, and the Giant, too, for all he was so big.