"What's this?" said the wood-mouse. "Are you eating your dead cousin?"
"Yes, I can't help her not being alive!" said the rat.
A little after, the black rat was gone, bones and all. The brown rat sat and licked his lips. Then he ran home to the forester's house.
The wood-mouse sat in her hole and thought it all over:
"Well, bless my soul, after all, what's the objection? The house-mouse will fall to the cat and I to the owl or the fox and the field-mouse to the young forester. Whereas the black rat has remained in the family."
BRISTOL: BURLEIGH LTD., AT THE BURLEIGH PRESS
Transcriber's note:
In the original, illustrations with captions were detailed as 'facing page', that has not been replicated in this etext