Peg Combs the Giant
Once there was a kingdom made almost entirely of hills. They were steep and green and very close together, so that everything in that kingdom was either uphill or downhill and nothing was ever on the way. The castle sat on the highest hill and the goose meadow at the very bottom. On the next two highest hills, east and west, lived two giants, who waved at each other across the valley every morning.
Peg kept the geese. She was cheerful about rain, cheerful about mud, and cheerful about geese, which takes some doing. Her hair was another matter. It was thick and wild and shaped like a haystack in a gale, and the geese kept losing things in it. One morning that spring she shook her head at the gate and out fell a goose egg and a spoon. She had not seen the egg in a week. She had never seen the spoon before in her life.
Peg owned exactly one comb. It had all its teeth, and she was saving it for the King’s Midsummer Ball. All spring she practised one dance step: two steps forward, a turn, and a little bob at the end. The geese watched, and some of them tried it. What Peg wanted most was to do her step in the castle ballroom with her hair, just once, combed and tidy.
The only trouble in that kingdom was Maud, the giantess on the west hill. Maud stamped when she was impatient, and for two years now she had been impatient all the time. Nobody knew why. Every time she stamped, the whole kingdom gave a little jump. The geese went up in the air and came down again, and up in the castle the King’s crown slid off.
The King was small and fussy, so he had tied his crown on with a bootlace under his chin. He was so ashamed of the bootlace that he talked to people sideways.
On Midsummer morning Peg put her comb in her apron pocket and took the geese down to the stream.
There was a giant sitting by the bridge, crying.
It was Humphrey, from the east hill. Sitting down, he was taller than the mill. He was crying so hard that the stream had come up a foot, and the geese were very pleased about it.
“Whatever is the matter?” Peg said.
Humphrey pointed at his beard. It was a great grey tangle down past his knees, and in the middle of it, looking out, was a sheep.
“It’s been in there a week,” Humphrey said. “Today I was going to ask Maud to marry me. I can’t ask her with a sheep in my beard, can I?”
“No,” Peg said, because she was honest.
“And there isn’t a comb for miles,” Humphrey said, and cried a bit more. The stream came up another inch.
Now, you may be thinking that a girl who has saved one comb all spring should not hand it to the first giant she finds crying at a bridge. You are quite right. Peg thought so too, for about as long as it takes to say it. Then she went and fetched the hay ladder.
Humphrey lay down on his back, and his beard spread over him like a grey quilt on a very big bed. Peg leaned the ladder against it and began.
It took all afternoon. Peg combed from the bottom up, the proper way, one knot at a time. Humphrey said “ow” now and then, very politely, and tried not to.
First came the sheep. The sheep had had a lovely week. The beard was warm, the beard was dry, and nobody in the beard had asked the sheep to do anything at all. The sheep came out backwards and went off down the lane in a sulk.
Next came a kettle.
“That’s my kettle,” Humphrey said. “I’ve been drinking out of the bucket.”
Then came three hats. They belonged, he thought, to people who had been standing too close when he sneezed.
Last of all, folded small (small for a giant, which is about the size of a tablecloth), came a letter.
Peg climbed down and spread it out on the grass. The writing was so big that she had to walk along the lines to read it.
“Dear Humphrey,” she read out. “Yes, I would love to, but comb your beard first. Love, Maud.”
Humphrey lifted his head so fast that the ladder fell over.
“I asked her two Midsummers ago!” he said. “She never answered, so I thought it was no.”
“She did answer,” Peg said. “She must have thrown it across while you were asleep.”
Far away on the west hill, Maud stamped. The geese went up in the air and came down again.
“Lie still,” Peg said. “There’s one knot left.”
It was the worst one, right under Humphrey’s chin. Peg set the comb in and pulled, gently, then less gently, and the knot came loose all at once. So did the comb. It broke clean in half with a snap.
You cannot go to a ball with hair like a haystack, and you cannot comb a haystack with half a comb, and Peg knew both of those things.
“Oh, Peg,” Humphrey said. “Your comb.”
“It was a very good comb,” Peg said. “It did the whole of you. Go on. She’s waited two years. Don’t make it three.”
Humphrey stood up, his beard smooth and silver to his knees. He thanked her three times and set off for the west hill, one field at a stride.
Peg watched from the meadow. She saw Humphrey get down on one knee. Then she saw Maud lift one foot to stamp, and stop, and put it down again very gently, and throw her arms round Humphrey’s neck.
For the first time in two years, the kingdom did not jump.
Up in the castle, the King went out on his balcony, saw the two giants holding hands, and understood at once, because he was fussy but he was not slow.
“Tonight,” the King said, “the ball will be a wedding feast as well.”
The herald rode down every hill shouting the news, all the way to the goose meadow, where Peg was doing her one step for the geese with her hair all anyhow. She was not going, of course. But she was glad.
At sunset the ground began to shake, very softly, the way a floor shakes when somebody is trying hard to walk on tiptoe. Humphrey and Maud were coming down the hill, stepping carefully over the castle.
Maud was carrying a comb as long as a garden rake. She had made it while the herald was riding round the hills, from a rail of her own fence, and whittled every tooth with her thumbnail.
“Humphrey told me what you did,” Maud said. “You gave us your comb, so here’s one back. We’re giants, so it’s a big one. Sit still.”
Peg sat on an upturned bucket, and Maud knelt and combed her hair so gently that Peg could hardly feel it. Out of Peg’s hair came two feathers, a button, the fork that went with the spoon, and another goose egg, which none of the geese would own up to.
When Maud had finished, Peg’s hair was combed and tidy, and it shone.
Then Humphrey carried her up the hill on his shoulder. The King met them at the gate. He untied the bootlace from under his chin and threw it over the wall, and nobody ever saw it again, which was how he liked it.
The giants were too big for the ballroom, so they danced outside on the hill, and everyone left the windows open. Peg danced her one step in the ballroom all night long, by the window nearest the giants: two steps forward, a turn, and a little bob at the end. Humphrey and Maud did it too, very carefully, so as not to tread on anybody.
After that the giants lived together on the west hill, and Humphrey combed his beard every morning. They had nobody left to wave to across the valley, so they waved down at the goose meadow instead. And Peg, who combed her hair every morning now, waved back with a comb the size of a garden rake.