“Why not hire me, Goody?” said Brother Fox.
“Can you call the flocks at evening?” asked the little old woman.
“Ah, you should hear me,” said Brother Fox. He opened his mouth very wide, and sang in a sweet voice:
“Tum-ti-ti, tum-ti-ti-tra-la-la.”
“You will do very well,” said the little old woman, quite carried away with the fox’s sweet singing. “You shall come home with me, and be my herdsman.”
Things went very well for a little while at the farm. Early each morning Brother Fox led the sheep and the cows and the swine to pasture, and at night he led them home again, and locked the barn, and bolted the pigpen.
But, somehow, after a week, the flocks and the herds seemed smaller each night when the little old woman went out to make the rounds of the farm.
“Where is the small black pig?” she asked of Brother Fox.
“Loitering in the meadow,” said Brother Fox, wiping his mouth with his paw.
“Where is the old ram?” asked the little old woman.