“Stop! stop!” cried the City Mouse.  “That is a trap!”

The little Country Mouse stopped and said, “What is a trap?”

“That thing is a trap,” said the little City Mouse.  “The minute you touch the cheese with your teeth something comes down on your head hard, and you’re dead.”

The little Country Mouse looked at the trap, and he looked at the cheese, and he looked at the little City Mouse.  “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I think I will go home.  I’d rather have barley and grain to eat and eat it in peace and comfort, than have brown sugar and dried prunes and cheese,—­and be frightened to death all the time!”

So the little Country Mouse went back to his home, and there he stayed all the rest of his life.

LITTLE JACK ROLLAROUND[1]

[1] Based on Theodor Storm’s story of Der Kleine Hawelmanu (George Westermann, Braunschweig).  Very freely adapted from the German story.

Once upon a time there was a wee little boy who slept in a tiny trundle-bed near his mother’s great bed.  The trundle-bed had castors on it so that it could be rolled about, and there was nothing in the world the little boy liked so much as to have it rolled.  When his mother came to bed he would cry, “Roll me around! roll me around!” And his mother would put out her hand from the big bed and push the little bed back and forth till she was tired.  The little boy could never get enough; so for this he was called “Little Jack Rollaround.”

One night he had made his mother roll him about, till she fell asleep, and even then he kept crying, “Roll me around! roll me around!” His mother pushed him about in her sleep, until she fell too soundly aslumbering; then she stopped.  But Little Jack Rollaround kept on crying, “Roll around! roll around!”

By and by the Moon peeped in at the window.  He saw a funny sight:  Little Jack Rollaround was lying in his trundle-bed, and he had put up one little fat leg for a mast, and fastened the corner of his wee shirt to it for a sail, and he was blowing at it with all his might, and saying, “Roll around! roll around!” Slowly, slowly, the little trundle-bed boat began to move; it sailed along the floor and up the wall and across the ceiling and down again!

“More! more!” cried Little Jack Rollaround; and the little boat sailed faster up the wall, across the ceiling, down the wall, and over the floor.  The Moon laughed at the sight; but when Little Jack Rollaround saw the Moon, he called out, “Open the door, old Moon!  I want to roll through the town, so that the people can see me!”

The Moon could not open the door, but he shone in through the keyhole, in a broad band.  And Little Jack Rollaround sailed his trundle-bed boat up the beam, through the keyhole, and into the street.

“Make a light, old Moon,” he said; “I want the people to see me!”

So the good Moon made a light and went along with him, and the little trundle-bed boat went sailing down the streets into the main street of the village.  They rolled past the town hall and the schoolhouse and the church; but nobody saw little Jack Rollaround, because everybody was in bed, asleep.