“THE FOX AND THE BADGER”
A Fox and a Badger met in the mountains and made an alliance, agreeing that whichever of them found anything good to eat should share it with the other, like a brother.
Now the Master knew where there was a trap set and baited with a great piece of meat. He therefore led the Badger there and showed him the meat.
“See, dear nephew,” said he, “how your clever uncle has led you to a place where we can both have a grand feast. But you are more limber than I, so just slip gently in and pull out the meat, while I keep watch that the moujik who put it here does not suddenly catch us napping.”
The Badger agreed without further words. He slipped into the trap, and was about to pull the meat from the hook, when—snap!—his forefoot was fast in the trap. The Badger broke out into a howl of distress, “Help, uncle, help! I am lost!”
Reinecke ran quickly to the trap, but instead of freeing the Badger he at once began to gnaw the meat.
“Just have a little patience,” he said, “till I have eaten this morsel before some one comes from the village. Then I will pull your leg out of the trap.”
Now Graybeard saw plainly that the Master had played a trick upon him, and he quickly seized him by the nape of the neck. At this moment the moujik came running up, crying from afar, “Hold on, my falcon-badger! By my faith, I will not rumple a hair of your head!”
So the moujik killed the Fox and stripped off his skin, saying to the Badger, “You may go free; his skin is worth five kopeks, but yours only two. Go, in God’s name!”
“It wasn’t fair of Reinecke,” observed the little boy.
“No, it wasn’t fair, and so he got punished,” said the grandmother.
The little boy was silent for a few minutes. Then he said:
“Little grandma, I am not patient yet.”
“Oho!” said the grandmother, “if my stories don’t help you to be patient, there is no use in my telling them.”
“But they do help, grandmamma,” said the little boy. “I am a little patient now, just a very little. If you told me another story I should be more patient still.”
The grandmother laughed. Then she told the story of