But, of course, as you know very well, there wasn’t any other lion!  It was only the reflection in the water!

So the poor old Lion floundered about and floundered about, and as he couldn’t get up the steep sides of the well, he was at last drowned.  And when he was drowned, the little Jackals took hold of hands and danced round the well, and sang,—­

“The Lion is dead!  The Lion is dead!

“We have killed the great Lion who would have killed us!

“The Lion is dead!  The Lion is dead!

“Ao!  Ao!  Ao!”

FOOTNOTES: 

[12] The four stories of the little Jackal, in this book, are adapted from stories in Old Deccan Days, by Mary Frere (John Murray), a collection of orally transmitted Hindu folk tales, which every teacher would gain by knowing.  In the Hindu animal legends the Jackal seems to play the role assigned in Germanic lore to Reynard the Fox, and to “Bre’r Rabbit” in the negro stories of Southern America; he is the clever and humorous trickster who usually comes out of an encounter with a whole skin, and turns the laugh on his enemy, however mighty he may be.[A]

THE COUNTRY MOUSE AND THE CITY MOUSE[13]

Once a little mouse who lived in the country invited a little mouse from the city to visit him.  When the little City Mouse sat down to dinner he was surprised to find that the Country Mouse had nothing to eat except barley and grain.

“Really,” he said, “you do not live well at all; you should see how I live!  I have all sorts of fine things to eat every day.  You must come to visit me and see how nice it is to live in the city.”

The little Country Mouse was glad to do this, and after a while he went to the city to visit his friend.

The very first place that the City Mouse took the Country Mouse to see was the kitchen cupboard of the house where he lived.  There, on the lowest shelf, behind some stone jars, stood a big paper bag of brown sugar.  The little City Mouse gnawed a hole in the bag and invited his friend to nibble for himself.

The two little mice nibbled and nibbled, and the Country Mouse thought he had never tasted anything so delicious in his life.  He was just thinking how lucky the City Mouse was, when suddenly the door opened with a bang, and in came the cook to get some flour.

“Run!” whispered the City Mouse.  And they ran as fast as they could to the little hole where they had come in.  The little Country Mouse was shaking all over when they got safely away, but the little City Mouse said, “That is nothing; she will soon go away and then we can go back.”

After the cook had gone away and shut the door they stole softly back, and this time the City Mouse had something new to show:  he took the little Country Mouse into a corner on the top shelf, where a big jar of dried prunes stood open.  After much tugging and pulling they got a large dried prune out of the jar on to the shelf and began to nibble at it.  This was even better than the brown sugar.  The little Country Mouse liked the taste so much that he could hardly nibble fast enough.  But all at once, in the midst of their eating, there came a scratching at the door and a sharp, loud miaouw!