The boy was no fool — I’ve said as much before — and his first thought was to get out of Mudferthing’s house just as fast as could be got.
But I’ve also said that the boy was brave and curious, and he was also, after so many trips to the giant’s house, more than a little tired of searching and searching and finding no answers.
“I’ll just take a peek and see what the old bugger is up to,” he thought to himself (not daring even to whisper). “Maybe I’ll see something that will give me an idea about how to beat him.”
You see, the boy had been at this for so long that he’d started to think of this as his quest, instead of something he would show a hero, once he knew Mudferthing’s weakness (which he very shortly will, as you might have guessed).
So the boy snuck ever-so-very-very-quietly up to the door frame of the room in which he could hear the giant’s sniffles — as well as a kind of ‘shoop-shoop… whiiiir’ every so often — and crawled on his hands and knees under the door (which is how he gotten from room to room since his first visit).
The room was stifling hot — Mudferthing had stoked up a fire that could have burned the boy’s house down in a minute — and the giant himself was sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, working a loom.
The boy watched for several minutes, trying to figure out what it was that Mudferthing could possibly be making for himself that he couldn’t more easily have just taken from some hapless farmer (or King, for that matter), and finally he understood.
Mudferthing was weaving himself a scarf.
And the boy was no expert, but he was fairly sure that the giant was very bad at it.