bring his
tail round and begin to gnaw it a little bit. The pain was dreadful, but
he could not help himself, he was obliged to do it or die. In the
evening the cricket came, as the rat had promised, to the top of the
chink, and at once began to sing. He sang all about the lady cricket
with whom he was in love, and then about the beautiful stars that were
shining in the sky, and how nice it was to be a cricket, for the
crickets were by far the most handsome and clever of all creatures, and
everybody would like to be a cricket if they could.

"Next, he went on to praise himself, that his lady might hear what fine
limbs he had, and so noble a form, and such a splendid chink to live in.
Thus he kept on the livelong night, and all about himself; and his
chirp, chirp, chirp filled the weasel's prison with such a noise that
the wretched thing could not sleep. He kept asking the cricket to tell
him if the rat had really done anything to enlarge the chink; but the
cricket was too busy to answer him till the dawn, and then, having
finished his song, he found time to attend to the weasel.

"'You have been very rude,' he said, 'to keep on talking while I was
singing, but I suppose, as you are only an ignorant weasel, you do not
understand good manners, and therefore I will condescend so far as to
inform you of the measures taken by my noble friend the rat to get you
out. If you were not so extremely ignorant and stupid you would guess
what he has done.'

"Now all this was very bitter to the weasel, who had always thought he
knew everything, to be insulted by a cricket; still he begged to be told
what it was. 'The rat,' went on the cricket, 'has brought a little piece
from a fungus, and has scratched a hole beside the stone and put it in
there. Now, when this begins to grow and the fungus pushes up, it will
move the stone and open a chink. In this way I have seen my lord the rat
heave up the heaviest paving stones and make a road for himself. Now are
you not stupid?' Then the cricket went home to bed.

"All day long the miserable weasel lay on the floor of his prison,
driven every now and then to gnaw his tail till he squeaked with the
pain. The only thing that kept him from despair was the hope of the
revenge he would have, if ever he did get out, on those who had laid the
trap for him. For hours he lay insensible, and only woke up when the rat
looked down the chink and asked him, with a jolly chuckle, how his tail
tasted, an