Page:The Floating Prince - Frank R Stockton.djvu/168



HERE was once a giant who had a patch-work quilt, and this is the way he got it:

One warm morning, the giant, whose name was Derido, was very tired, and laid down under a tree to take a nap. The tree was a palm-tree, and, having a great tuft of leaves at the top of a tall stem, it could not be expected to give enough shade for a full-sized giant; but Derido, when he laid down, put his head in the small spot of shade that the palm-leaves afforded, and as for the rest of his body, he did not care. After a while, the sun got higher and higher, and the spot of shade moved nearer and nearer the base of the tree, and poor Derido's upturned face was soon exposed to the full blaze of the fiery sun. But being very tired, he slept soundly, and knew nothing about either sunshine or shade.

Derido was a good, kind, honorable giant—not very old, but large for his age, and had been noted, from the time when he was a very little boy, no bigger than a horse, for being always ready to help other people. It was the exercise of this trait of his character that had made him so tired this warm morning.

For about a week, he had been absent from home on various errands of benevolence. Among other things, he conferred a great benefit upon the people of a certain country by bringing to 153