The Palace
‘By gumdrops!’ whispered the Big Friendly Giant. ‘Is this really it?’
‘There’s the Palace,’ Sophie whispered back.
Not more than a hundred yards away, through the tall trees in the garden, across the mown
lawns and the tidy flower-beds, the massive shape of the Palace itself loomed¹ through the darkness. It
was made of whitish stone. The sheer size of it staggered the BFG.
‘But this place is having a hundred bedrooms at least!’ he said.
‘Easily, I should think,’ Sophie whispered.
‘Then I is boggled,’ the BFG said. ‘How is I possibly finding the one where the Queen is
sleeping?’
‘Let’s go a bit closer and have a look,’ Sophie whispered.
The BFG glided² forward among the trees. Suddenly he stopped dead. The great ear in which
Sophie was sitting began to swivel round. ‘Hey!’ Sophie whispered. ‘You’re going to tip me out!’
‘Ssshh!’ the BFG whispered back. ‘I is hearing something!’ He stopped behind a clump³ of
bushes. He waited. The ear was till swinging this way and that. Sophie had to hang on tight to the
side of it to save herself from tumbling out. The BFG pointed⁴ through a gap in the bushes, and there,
not more than fifty yards away, she saw a man padding softly across the lawn. He had a guard-dog
with him on a leash⁵.
The BFG stayed as still as a stone. So did Sophie. The man and the dog walked on and
disappeared into the darkness.
‘You was telling me they has no soldiers in the back garden,’ the BFG whispered.
‘He wasn’t a soldier,’ Sophie whispered. ‘He was some sort of a watchman. We’ll have to be
careful!’
‘I is not too worried,’ the BFG said. ‘These wacksey big ears of mine is picking up even the
noise of a man breathing the other side of this garden.’
‘How much longer before it begins to get light?’ Sophie whispered.
‘Very short,’ the BFG said. ‘We must go pell-mell for leather now!’
He glided forward through the vast garden, and once again Sophie noticed how he seemed to

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