be frustrating an instinct. That would be bad—what did J. G. Fraser have to say about such childhood tastes? Or Irvin S. Cobb? Or Freud? Clay decided not to deprive Helen further of giants. Bad dreams tonight would be on his own head.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” he nodded. “The Trees of Truth would be full of giants. Big ones.”
“Bigger than you?” suggested Helen, who considered her father to be of tremendous stature.
“Much bigger, darling. And bigger than Uncle Frank, or the football boys you saw last week. Twice—three or four times as big. Taller than those trees yonder.”
Helen glanced at the trees, and shivered. “How many eyes do they have?” she almost whispered.
“Only one eye apiece,” improvised Clay promptly, remembering the Cyclops who imprisoned Ulysses. “One eye in the middle of the forehead. But, on the other hand, they have each two or three rows of teeth—sometimes more, and as sharp as swords. And shaggy beards.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the trees, and grew pale.
“I’m afraid of them,” she said.
But Clay had been thinking hard and fast, to deal with just such a contingency. “Don’t worry,” he told her. "The giants can’t hurt us—not when Daddy smokes this magic pipe all the way from England.” He blew out a great cloud of blue vapor by way of punctuation. Because giants are afraid of it.”
“Really truly?” And Helen squinted hopefully at the pipe.
“Oh, yes. Terribly afraid. They’d never dare come near enough to touch us.” Clay began to mix in fragments of half-forgotten Indian lore, learned a generation ago in Boy Scout camp. “You see, the old Indians used tobacco for a charm. Their medicine men smoked it to drive away bad things—spirits and witches and so on. Giants are bad things, just about the worst. They hate the smell of tobacco. Especially,” and he exhaled a bigger cloud, “when it’s in a magic pipe, like Daddy’s.”
Helen glanced at the trees once more, but not pallidly this time. Her chin was squared.
“Well, then, I won’t be afraid of those old giants over there,” she announced sturdily.
At her games again, thought Clay. “Good girl!” he applauded. “Let’s sit down here, on this nice soft rock, and I’ll tell you more things.”
He had meant to turn the conversation to the autumn colors of the leaves, discussing them in simple terms Helen’s six-year-old mind might digest. But, as she took a seat beside him, she had no such idea.
“What do giants wear. Daddy?” she continued on the subject which just now preoccupied her.
“They wear skins,” he smiled down at her. “Deerskins and bearskins, sewed together like patchwork, to make a piece big enough to cover them.”
Her eyes were still fixed on the middle distance beyond the brush. “What kind of shoes?”
“No shoes, of course. Their feet are too big for shoes, aren’t they now?”
“I suppose so,” agreed Helen seriously. “I can’t see their feet from here—What do giants eat?”
“Men,” said Clay impressively.
“Men who don’t have magic pipes?”
“Yes.” To comfort her, Clay blew smoke. “Nobody had better come among the giants without tobacco.”
“They look scared,” announced Helen, and stood up as if to get a better view of something. “Look at them. Daddy.”
“Yes, yes, you’re right,” nodded Clay, stooping to pick up a very brilliant maple leaf. “Now, take this to Mummy when
