my stocking." He pulled up his stocking, which was as large as a small
bolster-case, and strode off. His strides were six or seven feet long,
so that it was quite easy for him to be at the bottom of the hill, ready
to meet the baker's boy when he came down swinging the empty basket to
meet his master's cart, which had been leaving bread at the cottages
along the road.

Robert crouched behind a haystack in the farmyard, that is at the
corner, and when he heard the boy come whistling along he jumped out at
him and caught him by the collar.

"Now," he said, and his voice was about four times its usual size, just
as his body was four times its, "I'm going to teach you to kick boys
smaller than you."

He lifted up the baker's boy and set him on the top of the haystack,
which was about sixteen feet from the ground, and then he sat down on
the roof of the barn and told the baker's boy exactly what he thought of
him. I don't think the boy heard it all--he was in a sort of trance of
terror. When Robert had said everything he could think of, and some
things twice over, he shook the boy and said--

[Illustration: He lifted up the baker's boy and set him on top of the
haystack]

"And now get down the best way you can," and left him.

I don't know how the baker's boy got down, but I do know that he missed
the cart and got into the very hottest of hot water when he turned up at
last at the bakehouse. I am sorry for him, but after all, it was quite
right that he should be taught that boys mustn't use their feet when
they fight, but their fists. Of course the water he got into only became
hotter when he tried to tell his master about the boy he had licked
and the giant as high as a church, because no one could possibly believe
such a tale as that. Next day the tale was believed--but that was too
late to be of any use to the baker's boy.

When Robert rejoined the others he found them in the garden. Anthea had
thoughtfully asked Martha to let them have dinner out there--because the
dining-room was rather small, and it would have been so awkward to have
a brother the size of Robert in there. The Lamb, who had slept
peacefully during the whole stormy morning, was now found to be
sneezing, and Martha said he had a cold and would be better indoors.

"And really it's just as well," said Cyril, "for I don't believe he'd
ever have stopped screaming if he'd once seen you, the awful size you
are!"

Robert was indeed what a draper woul