"I think you're a wonderful teacher, and I'd like to be friends with you, but I really don't want to be eaten."

"Well you’re certainly going to be!" she said confidently.

"It's not fair."

"That's your perspective, because you're the one who'll be eaten. Think how happy I will be. It certainly won't seem unfair to me."

"But Miss Balfour, I thought that we were friends."

"I'd love to eat a little friend.  I am big enough now that I can easily swallow you whole. We had better get some rest now," she said, settling her face on her pillow.

"But Miss Balfour, I don't want to be eaten."

"Well you will be, Timothy. You cannot escape, and I see no reason to let you go. If you like, you may continue to think of me as your teacher, but I am going to think of you as a piece of luscious food and have you for dinner without sympathy or mercy. The gobbling of you shall not frighten me in the least, and there is nothing you can possibly say or offer me that would persuade me to change my mind and spare you. It would be quite natural for a big giantess like me to eat a tiny little boy like you for my lunch. So there!"

She poked out her tongue, teasing him.

"I hope that you were watching my tongue, Timothy, because you will be placed upon it at dinner time. Now I shall open my mouth wide in front of your little window. Have a look inside it, since you will be inside it yourself when I do the gobbling."

She opened her mouth and he stared past her huge lower lip in at her big sparkling tongue and the distant throat that awaited him. It was like a terrifying tunnel down to her stomach of no return.

"So what do you think about that, little Timothy? Would it help you to prepare yourself for tomorrow, if you climbed into my mouth for a few minutes now? I shall keep my teeth apart. You will not get hurt."

"I shall try" he said.

She opened her mouth. He sat on the window ledge, climbed over her lip, and lay down on her tongue, with his face and arms resting on her lip, looking out at her dress as she sat back in her bed. After a few minutes he called out to her.

"Can I come out now, please Miss Balfour?"

She brought her mouth back to the dolls house window, and he climbed back to his bed.

"I don't mind going into your mouth Miss Balfour. I could do it every day without being scared, if you like the taste of me. I just worry about going into your stomach."

"Are you saying that I don't have a nice stomach?" she asked with an air of being offended by his remark.

"No, but I don't want to live in it."

"Well you had better change your mind, because you are going to be in it for a very long time. It will not matter to me what you think of it. I will continue enjoying my happy long life long after I have swallowed you down."