may be sure, as fast as HE could. As soon as they were out
of danger the City Mouse said, "That was the old Cat; she is the best
mouser in town,--if she once gets you, you are lost."

"This is very terrible," said the little Country Mouse; "let us not go
back to the cupboard again."

"No," said the City Mouse, "I will take you to the cellar; there is
something especial there."

So the City Mouse took his little friend down the cellar stairs and
into a big cupboard where there were many shelves. On the shelves were
jars of butter, and cheeses in bags and out of bags. Overhead hung
bunches of sausages, and there were spicy apples in barrels standing
about. It smelled so good that it went to the little Country Mouse's
head. He ran along the shelf and nibbled at a cheese here, and a bit
of butter there, until he saw an especially rich, very
delicious-smelling piece of cheese on a queer little stand in a corner.
He was just on the point of putting his teeth into the cheese when the
City Mouse saw him.

"Stop! stop!" cried the City Mouse. "That is a trap!"

The little Country Mouse stopped and said, "What is a trap?"

"That thing is a trap," said the little City Mouse. "The minute you
touch the cheese with your teeth something comes down on your head
hard, and you're dead."

The little Country Mouse looked at the trap, and he looked at the
cheese, and he looked at the little City Mouse. "If you'll excuse me,"
he said, "I think I will go home. I'd rather have barley and grain to
eat and eat it in peace and comfort, than have brown sugar and dried
prunes and cheese,--and be frightened to death all the time!"

So the little Country Mouse went back to his home, and there he stayed
all the rest of his life.

LITTLE JACK ROLLAROUND[1]

[1] Based on Theodor Storm's story of Der Kleine Hawelmanu (George
Westermann, Braunschweig). Very freely adapted from the German story.

Once upon a time there was a wee little boy who slept in a tiny
trundle-bed near his mother's great bed. The trundle-bed had castors
on it so that it could be rolled about, and there was nothing in the
world the little boy liked so much as to have it rolled. When his
mother came to bed he would cry, "Roll me around! roll me around!" And
his mother would put out her hand from the big bed and push the little
bed back and forth till she was tired. The little boy could never get
enough; so for this he was called "Little Jack Rollaround."