Free Fairy Tales for Young Readers by E. Nesbit

finished his egg in the oven. Then he found he could see through the crack near the hinges, so he glued his eye to it and saw! He saw the giant—a great big fat man with red hair and mutton-chop whiskers. The giant flung himself down at the table and roared for his dinner, and his trembling old wife brought him a whole hog, which he tore in pieces in his hands and ate without any manners, and he didn’t offer his wife so much as a piece of the crackling. When he had finished he licked his great greasy fingers and called out: “Bring me my hen!”
    Jack was rather surprised. He thought it was a curious creature to have on the dinner-table. But the next instant he understood, for the hen stood on the table, and every time the giant said “Lay!” it laid a golden egg.
    It went on doing this until Jack thought it must be really tired, and until the giant was, for he lay back in his chair and fell asleep.
    The first thing that occurred to Jack to do was to leap out of the oven, seize the hen under his arm, and make off for the beanstalk and his home as fast as ever he could.
    I won’t describe the scene in the cottage when he arrived. His mother was inclined to scold him, but when she thoroughly understood about the hen she kissed him instead, and said that she had always believed he would do something clever, some day.
    Jack sold golden eggs at the market every week, and his mother gave up taking in washing; but she still went oncleaning the cottage herself. I believe she rather liked that kind of work.
    Then suddenly one morning, as Jack stood in the cottage garden with his hands in the pockets of a quite new pair of lavender-coloured breeches, he felt he couldn’t go on living without another journey up the beanstalk, and forgetting to tell his mother that he might not be in to dinner, he was off and up. He found the same dry, withered land at the top, and, although he was not hungry this time, he couldn’t think of anything new to say, so he said the same thing to the old woman; but this time he found it much harder to get round her, although she did not know him again. Either his face was changed, or the lavender-coloured breeches were a complete disguise.
    â€œNo,” she kept on saying, and Jack lost his temper when she had said it twenty-two times. “A boy came before, and he was a bad one and a thief, and I can’t let another boy in.”
    â€œBut I’ve got an honest face,” said Jack. “Everybody says so.”
    â€œThat’s true,” said the woman, and she let him in. This time he was obliged to hide before he had begun to eat, and he was rather glad, because, as I said, he was not hungry—the giant’s wife had only given him bread and cheese, and the cheese was rather stale. When they heard the giant coming along the road the woman lifted the copper lid and made Jack get in.
    The giant seemed in a good temper, for he chucked his wife under the chin and said:
    â€œFresh meat today, my dear. I can smell it.”
    â€œI’m—I’m afraid you’re wrong,” said his wife; and Jack could hear by the way she said it that she was very frightened. “It’s half the ox you had yesterday, and that fresh meat you smell is just a bit of a dead cart-horse that a crow dropped on the roof.”
    The giant seemed sulky after that, and didn’t eat his dinner with much appetite, and when his wife was clearing away he suddenly laid hold of her and shouted:

    â€œBring me my money-bags!”
    Jack couldn’t help lifting up the copper lid a little bit when he heard the chink of the coins, and when he saw the giant counting out the great heap of gold and silver he longed to have it for his own, for he knew that it ought by rights to belong to him or his mother.
    Presently the giant fell asleep, and Jack looked all round to see if the wife was about before he dared to get out of the copper. And he heard her walking about