Then the giant strode back to the palace in a tower of a temper, and demanded “Nix Naught Nothing.”  So this time they dressed up the gardener’s boy, and wept and wailed when the giant, fine and satisfied, carried his prize off on his back.  Then the same thing happened.  The giant grew weary of his burden, and sate down on the big stone to rest.  So he fell a-dozing, woke with a start, and called out: 

  “Hodge, Hodge, on my shoulders!  Say
   What d’ye make the time o’ day?”

And the gardener’s boy replied: 

  “Time that my father the gardener took
   Greens for the wise Queen’s dinner to cook!”

So the giant saw at once that a second trick had been played on him and became quite mad with rage.  He flung the boy from him so that he was killed, and then strode back to the palace, where he cried with fury:  “Give me what you promised to give, Nix Naught Nothing, or I will destroy you all, root and branch.”

So then they saw they must give up the dear little Prince, and this time they really wept and wailed as the giant carried off the boy on his back.  And this time, after the giant had had his rest at the big stone, and had woke up and called: 

  “Hodge, Hodge, on my shoulders!  Say
   What d’ye make the time o’ day?”

the little Prince replied: 

  “Time for the King my father to call,
  ‘Let supper be served in the banqueting hall.’”

Then the giant laughed with glee and rubbed his hands saying, “I’ve got the right one at last.”  So he took Nix Naught Nothing to his own house under the whirlpools; for the giant was really a great Magician who could take any form he chose.  And the reason he wanted a little prince so badly was that he had lost his wife, and had only one little daughter who needed a playmate sorely.  So Nix Naught Nothing and the Magician’s daughter grew up together, and every year made them fonder and fonder of each other, until she promised to marry him.

Now the Magician had no notion that his daughter should marry just an ordinary human prince, the like of whom he had eaten a thousand times, so he sought some way in which he could quietly get rid of Nix Naught Nothing.  So he said one day, “I have work for you, Nix Naught Nothing!  There is a stable hard by which is seven miles long, and seven miles broad, and it has not been cleaned for seven years.  By to-morrow evening you must have cleaned it, or I will have you for my supper.”

Well, before dawn, Nix Naught Nothing set to work at his task; but, as fast as he cleared the muck, it just fell back again.  So by breakfast-time he was in a terrible sweat; yet not one whit nearer the end of his job was he.  Now the Magician’s daughter, coming to bring him his breakfast, found him so distraught and distracted that he could scarce speak to her.

“We’ll soon set that to rights,” she said.  So she just clapped her hands and called: