GOOD RIDDANCE
NOW, let me see. In the last story we left little Puss, Junior, in the house of the old man who brought his wife home in a wheelbarrow. Well, Puss heard him take off his shoes and get into bed, and then out went the light. I guess the old man leaned out of bed and blew it out. But Puss didn't go to bed. Oh, my, no! He slipped off his red-topped boots, so as not to frighten the rats and the mice and stole softly over to the window. The moon was bright and the stars were twinkling in the sky.
"It's a long time since I've been a mouser!" laughed Puss to himself. "I wonder if I have lost my cunning?" And he sat down by the window and crossed his leg over the other. "Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse," and it was not the night before Christmas, either. Pretty soon the sound of scampering feet caught his ear, and, turning his head, he saw a dozen mice or more running over the floor, and after that two big rats stole softly across the old rag rug in front of the fireplace. With a leap, Puss landed close to the rats, and with his right paw, laid hold of the nearest, and with his left paw caught the other. "Squeak, squeak! Oh, let us go!" they cried.
"Not unless you promise to leave this house," replied Puss, fiercely, his whiskers standing out straight and his eyes glaring like two balls of fire.
"We will, we will!" squeaked the rats.
"Then go!" cried Puss, "and don't you ever come back!"
"We won't, we won't!" cried the terrified rats.
And after that Puss softly crept into the kitchen, where on the table sat three little mice eating a piece of cake. In a second Puss had them fast in his claws.
"Squeak, squeak!" screamed the little mice.
"I'll spare you," said Puss, glaring at them with eyes as bright as automobile lamps. "I'll let you go if you'll promise to leave this house with all your sisters and brothers and cousins and aunts and fathers and mothers and grandmothers and grandfathers, and all your friends, and everybody else that I can't think of, for I'm so mad I could eat you."
"Oh don't," they cried; "we'll go, we'll go! We'll promise to leave."
And after that the little old man was never bothered with rats and mice.