GOOD NEIGHBORS
WE once had a family of giants for neighbors. Not museum giants, I mean real giants. I never asked just how big they were, but you can judge for yourself after I have told you about them.
Perhaps I would n't have taken the house if I had known that the giants lived so near by, for I did n't know much about such people then; but I did n't discover that their house was next ours until I had made the bargain with the assent. I had asked him all about everything I could think of—all about stationary wash-tubs, malaria, mosquitos, the milk-man, the ice-man, the letter-man, and all the other kinds of men—but I never thought to ask about giants. No man, however prudent, can think of everything. But as I was shutting the front gate, after I had said I would take the house for a year, I saw a footprint in the road. The footprint that Robinson Crusoe saw surprised him, but even Crusoe did n't see such a footprint as this, for it was nearly as big as a boat.
"What's that?" I asked the agent.
"What? Where?" he asked, as uneasily as if I had discovered water in the cellar, or a leak in the roof.
"That—there!" I answered, pointing to the footprint.
"Oh, that!" he answered. "That must be the footprint of Mr. Megalopod."
"It seems to cover considerable space," I suggested.
"Yes," he admitted. Even an agent could n't deny that. "He's
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