ou here?"

"Alas!" said Pussy, "my master loved me as long as I could bite, but
now that I can bite no longer and have left off catching mice--and I
used to catch them finely once--he doesn't like to kill me, but he has
left me in the wood, where I must perish miserably."

"No, dear Pussy!" said the fox; "you leave it to me, and I'll help you
to get your daily bread."

"You are very good, dear little sister foxey!" said the cat, and the
fox built him a little shed with a garden round it to walk in.

Now one day the hare came to steal the man's cabbage.
"_Kreem-kreem-kreem!_" he squeaked. But the cat popped his head out of
the window, and when he saw the hare he put up his back and stuck up
his tail and said: "_Ft-t-t-t-t-Frrrrrrr!_"

The hare was frightened and ran away, and told the bear, the wolf and
the wild boar all about it.

"Never mind," said the bear. "I tell you what, we'll all four give a
banquet, and invite the fox and the cat, and do for the pair of them.
Now, look here! I'll steal the man's mead; and you, Mr Wolf, steal his
fat-pot; and you, Mr Wildboar, root up his fruit-trees; and you, Mr
Bunny, go and invite the fox and the cat to dinner."

So they made everything ready as the bear had said, and the hare ran
off to invite the guests. He came beneath the window and said: "We
invite your little ladyship Foxey-Woxey, together with Mr Shaggy
Matthew, to dinner," and back he ran again.

"But you should have told them to bring their spoons with them," said
the bear.

"Oh, what a head I've got!--if I didn't quite forget!" cried the hare,
and back he went again, ran beneath the window and cried: "Mind you
bring your spoons!"

"Very well," said the fox.

So the cat and the fox went to the banquet, and when the cat saw the
bacon he put up his back and stuck out his tail, and cried: "_Mee-oo,
mee-oo!_" with all his might. But they thought he said: "_Ma-lo,
ma-lo!_"[2]

[Footnote 2: "What a little! What a little!"]

"What!" said the bear, who was hiding behind the beeches with the
other beasts, "here have we four been getting together all we could,
and this pig-faced cat calls it too little! What a monstrous cat he
must be to have such an appetite!"

So they were all four very frightened, and the bear ran up a tree, and
the others hid where they could.

But when the cat saw the boar's bristles sticking out from behind the
bushes he thought it was a mouse, and put up his back again and cried:
"_F