D RIDDANCE

NOW, let me see. In the last story we left little Puss, Junior, in the
house of the old man who brought his wife home in a wheelbarrow. Well,
Puss heard him take off his shoes and get into bed, and then out went
the light. I guess the old man leaned out of bed and blew it out. But
Puss didn't go to bed. Oh, my, no! He slipped off his red-topped boots,
so as not to frighten the rats and the mice and stole softly over to the
window. The moon was bright and the stars were twinkling in the sky.

"It's a long time since I've been a mouser!" laughed Puss to himself. "I
wonder if I have lost my cunning?" And he sat down by the window and
crossed his leg over the other. "Not a creature was stirring, not even a
mouse," and it was not the night before Christmas, either. Pretty soon
the sound of scampering feet caught his ear, and, turning his head, he
saw a dozen mice or more running over the floor, and after that two big
rats stole softly across the old rag rug in front of the fireplace.
With a leap, Puss landed close to the rats, and with his right paw, laid
hold of the nearest, and with his left paw caught the other. "Squeak,
squeak! Oh, let us go!" they cried.

"Not unless you promise to leave this house," replied Puss, fiercely,
his whiskers standing out straight and his eyes glaring like two balls
of fire.

"We will, we will!" squeaked the rats.

"Then go!" cried Puss, "and don't you ever come back!"

"We won't, we won't!" cried the terrified rats.

And after that Puss softly crept into the kitchen, where on the table
sat three little mice eating a piece of cake. In a second Puss had them
fast in his claws.

"Squeak, squeak!" screamed the little mice.

"I'll spare you," said Puss, glaring at them with eyes as bright as
automobile lamps. "I'll let you go if you'll promise to leave this house
with all your sisters and brothers and cousins and aunts and fathers and
mothers and grandmothers and grandfathers, and all your friends, and
everybody else that I can't think of, for I'm so mad I could eat you."

"Oh don't," they cried; "we'll go, we'll go! We'll promise to leave."

And after that the little old man was never bothered with rats and
mice.

MISTER FOX

IT was late in the evening as Puss, Junior, entered a gloomy forest. It
was very dark beneath the big, tall trees, so by and by he stopped and
looked about him, when all of a sudden--

"A fox went out in a hungry plight,