“Are you going to eat me?” asked Alice, from inside the bag, where she was trembling so that she squashed the yeast cake all out, as flat as a pancake on a cold winter morning, when you have brown sausage gravy and maple syrup to pour on it.

“Eat you?  Of course, I’m going to eat you!” cried the fox.  “That is why I caught you.  But I can’t decide whether to have you boiled or roasted.  It’s quite trying not to know.  I must make up my mind soon, however.”

Then he ran on some more, over the hills, bumpity-bump, with poor Alice jouncing around in that bag, and the little duck girl wished the fox would be a long time making up his mind which way to cook her, for she thought that maybe Jimmie might come and save her in the meanwhile.

“It didn’t do much good to sing that song,” thought Alice, and I suppose it didn’t, but you know you can’t always have what you want in this world.  Oh, my, no, and a bottle of cough medicine besides.

Well, the old fox hurried on, with Alice in the bag and he ran fast to get to his den, and pretty soon the little duck girl felt him coming to a stop.  Then she heard some one saying: 

“Ah, good day, Mr. Fox; what have you in that bag?”

“I have apples in this bag,” said the fox.  Oh, but wasn’t he the bold, bad story-telling fox, though?

“Apples, eh?” asked the voice again, and then Alice knew right away who it was.  Can you guess?  No?  Well, I’ll tell you.  It was Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy, the kind old muskrat lady.  It was she who had asked the question.

“Oh, so you have apples in there?” Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy repeated to the fox.  “Well, now, do you know,” she went on, “I am very fond of apples.  I wish you would give me one.”

“No,” answered the bad fox, “I can’t.  These are very special apples, very sour, in fact, and I’m sure you wouldn’t like them.”

“Oh, I just love sour apples,” said the muskrat, moving nearer to the fox, and showing her sharp teeth, like the carpenter’s chisel when he shaves the door down to make it smaller.  “I just love sour apples,” said the nurse.

“Oh, I made a mistake, these are sweet apples,” said the fox, quickly, waggling his big tail like a dusting brush.

“I made a mistake, too,” went on Miss Fuzzy-Wuzzy.  “I guess I love sweet apples instead of sour ones.”

“You will have to excuse me,” again spoke the fox quickly.  “I made two mistakes.  These apples are half sweet and half sour, and not good at all.”

“If there is anything I am fonder of than anything else it’s a half sweet and a half sour apple,” declared the muskrat, and she showed her teeth some more, as if she were smiling, only she wasn’t.  She was getting ready to bite the bad fox, I guess.

Just then Alice moved around in the bag, hoping Miss Fuzzy-Wuzzy would see her, and what’s more, the kind muskrat nurse did.  “Ah!” she exclaimed, “you have moving apples, I see.  I just love moving apples.”