How to Tell Stories to Children, And Some Stories to Tell Part 12

By-and-by a large Tommy Cat came along.

"Are you my brother?" asked the child.

"Go and look at yourself in the gla.s.s," said the Tommy Cat haughtily, "and you will have your answer. I have been was.h.i.+ng myself in the sun all the morning, while it is clear that no water has come near you for a long time. There are no such creatures as you in my family, I am humbly thankful to say."

He walked on, waving his tail, and the child waited.

Presently a pig came trotting along.

The child did not wish to ask the pig if he were his brother, but the pig did not wait to be asked.

"Hallo, brother!" he grunted.

"I am not your brother!" said the child.

"Oh yes, you are!" said the pig. "I confess I am not proud of you, but there is no mistaking the members of our family. Come along, and have a good roll in the barnyard! There is some lovely black mud there."

"I don't like to roll in mud!" said the child.

"Tell that to the hens!" said the Pig Brother. "Look at your hands and your shoes, and your pinafore! Come along, I say! You may have some of the pig-wash for supper, if there is more than I want."

"I don't want pig-was.h.!.+" said the child; and he began to cry.

Just then the Tidy Angel came out.

"I have set everything to rights," she said, "and so it must stay. Now, will you go with the Pig Brother, or will you come back with me, and be a tidy child?"

"With you, with you!" cried the child; and he clung to the Angel's dress.

The Pig Brother grunted.

"Small loss!" he said. "There will be all the more wash for me!" And he trotted off.

THE CAKE[1]

[Footnote 1: From _The Golden Windows_, by Laura E. Richards. (H.R.

Allenson Ltd. 2s. 6d. net.)]

A child quarrelled with his brother one day about a cake.

"It is my cake!" said the child.

"No, it is mine!" said his brother.

"You shall not have it!" said the child. "Give it to me this minute!" And he fell upon his brother and beat him.

Just then came by an Angel who knew the child.

"Who is this that you are beating?" asked the Angel.

"It is my brother," said the child.

"No, but truly," said the Angel, "who is it?"

"It is my brother, I tell you!" said the child.

"Oh no," said the Angel, "that cannot be; and it seems a pity for you to tell an untruth, because that makes spots on your soul. If it were your brother, you would not beat him."

"But he has my cake!" said the child.

"Oh," said the Angel, "now I see my mistake. You mean that the cake is your brother; and that seems a pity, too, for it does not look like a very good cake,--and, besides, it is all crumbled to pieces."

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN TOWN[1]

[Footnote 1: From traditions, with rhymes from Browning's _The Pied Piper of Hamelin_.]

Once I made a pleasure trip to a country called Germany; and I went to a funny little town, where all the streets ran uphill. At the top there was a big mountain, steep like the roof of a house, and at the bottom there was a big river, broad and slow. And the funniest thing about the little town was that all the shops had the same thing in them; bakers' shops, grocers' shops, everywhere we went we saw the same thing,--big chocolate rats, rats and mice, made out of chocolate. We were so surprised that after a while, "Why do you have rats in your shops?" we asked.

"Don't you know this is Hamelin town?" they said. "What of that?" said we.

"Why, Hamelin town is where the Pied Piper came," they told us; "surely you know about the Pied Piper?" "_What_ about the Pied Piper?" we said.

And this is what they told us about him.

It seems that once, long, long ago, that little town was dreadfully troubled with rats. The houses were full of them, the shops were full of them, the churches were full of them, they were _everywhere_. The people were all but eaten out of house and home. Those rats,

They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles, Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats!

At last it got so bad that the people simply couldn't stand it any longer.

So they all came together and went to the town hall, and they said to the Mayor (you know what a mayor is?), "See here, what do we pay you your salary for? What are you good for, if you can't do a little thing like getting rid of these rats? You must go to work and clear the town of them; find the remedy that's lacking, or--we'll send you packing!"

Well, the poor Mayor was in a terrible way. What to do he didn't know. He sat with his head in his hands, and thought and thought and thought.

Suddenly there came a little _rat-tat_ at the door. Oh! how the Mayor jumped! His poor old heart went pit-a-pat at anything like the sound of a rat. But it was only the sc.r.a.ping of shoes on the mat. So the Mayor sat up, and said, "Come in!"

And in came the strangest figure! It was a man, very tall and very thin, with a sharp chin and a mouth where the smiles went out and in, and two blue eyes, each like a pin; and he was dressed half in red and half in yellow--he really was the strangest fellow!--and round his neck he had a long red and yellow ribbon, and on it was hung a thing something like a flute, and his fingers went straying up and down it as if he wanted to be playing.

He came up to the Mayor and said, "I hear you are troubled with rats in this town."

"I should say we were," groaned the Mayor.

"Would you like to get rid of them? I can do it for you."

"You can?" cried the Mayor. "How? Who are you?"

"Men call me the Pied Piper," said the man, "and I know a way to draw after me everything that walks, or flies, or swims. What will you give me if I rid your town of rats?"

"Anything, anything," said the Mayor. "I don't believe you can do it, but if you can, I'll give you a thousand guineas."