Both had their
gifts, by which they got their livelihood; Ned could hop a hundred yards
with any man in England, and Giles could lift up with his teeth any
dresser or kitchen table in the country, and, standing erect, hold it
dangling in his jaws. There's many a big oak table and dresser in
certain districts of England, which bear the marks of Giles's teeth; and
I make no doubt that, a hundred or two years hence, there'll be strange
stories about those marks, and that people will point them out as a proof
that there were giants in bygone times, and that many a dentist will
moralise on the decays which human teeth have undergone.
'They wanted me to go about with them, and exhibit my gift occasionally
as they did theirs, promising that the money that was got by the
exhibitions should be honestly divided. I consented, and we set off
together, and that evening coming to a village, and putting up at the
alehouse, all the grand folks of the village being there smoking their
pipes, we contrived to introduce the subject of hopping--the upshot being
that Ned hopped against the schoolmaster for a pound, and beat him
hollow; shortly after, Giles, for a wager, took up the kitchen table in
his jaws, though he had to pay a shilling to the landlady for the marks
he left, whose grandchildren will perhaps get money by exhibiting them.
As for myself, I did nothing that day, but the next, on which my
companions did nothing, I showed off at hulling stones against a cripple,
the crack man for stone throwing, of a small town, a few miles farther
on.
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