“Enough, madam,” said the dog, proudly; “you need not speak twice to me,—farewell.”
And he turned away very slowly, and went under a tree, where he took up his lodgings for the night. But the next morning there was an amazing commotion in the neighbourhood; a stranger, of a very different style of travelling from that of the dog, had arrived at the dead of the night, and fixed his abode in a large cavern hollowed out of a steep rock. The noise he had made in flying through the air was so great that it had awakened every bird and beast in the parish; and Reynard, whose bad conscience never suffered him to sleep very soundly, putting his head out of the window, perceived, to his great alarm, that the stranger was nothing less than a monstrous griffin.
Now the griffins are the richest beasts in the world; and that’s the reason they keep so close under ground. Whenever it does happen that they pay a visit above, it is not a thing to be easily forgotten.
The magpie was all agitation. What could the griffin possibly want there? She resolved to take a peep at the cavern, and accordingly she hopped timorously up the rock, and pretended to be picking up sticks for her nest.
“Holla, ma’am!” cried a very rough voice, and she saw the griffin putting his head out of the cavern. “Holla! you are the very lady I want to see; you know all the people about here, eh?”
“All the best company, your lordship, I certainly do,” answered the magpie, dropping a courtesy.
Upon this the griffin walked out; and smoking his pipe leisurely in the open air, in order to set the pie at her ease, continued,—
“Are there any respectable beasts of good families settled in this neighbourhood?”
“Oh, most elegant society, I assure your lordship,” cried the pie. “I have lived here myself these ten years, and the great heiress, the cat yonder, attracts a vast number of strangers.”
“Humph! heiress, indeed! much you know about heiresses!” said the griffin. “There is only one heiress in the world, and that’s my daughter.”