This frightened old Mother Red Cap greatly. She thought and thought, and then she said: “My two little grandchildren, Janko and Mirko, are very thin indeed. I must give them three fine meals or they will not be fat enough for you to eat. In the meantime, do you run about through the forest to get yourself a better appetite.”
So Bruin, the Bear, went away and ran about in the woods all the rest of the day. When it was evening he came back with a fine appetite and rapped at the door of old Mother Red Cap’s house.
“Send out Janko and Mirko,” he growled, “and see what short work I will make of them.”
“Oho, I’ll not do that,” laughed old Mother Red Cap from inside the house. “You are too late, Bruin. Janko has just bolted the door so fast that you will not be able to open it and I have put Mirko to bed, where he is fast asleep. You must go back to the forest and come some other day.”
So Bruin, the Bear, saw that old Mother Red Cap had got the best of him and he went back to the forest, hungry, to look for his supper there.
THE RABBIT WHO
WAS AFRAID.
Once upon a time, a very long way from here, a little wild Rabbit sat under a tall palm tree. All about him were other tall palm trees and larger animals than he, and the wild rabbit thought and thought. And after the Rabbit had thought a while he said to himself, “What if the earth should crack and swallow me up.”
Just then the wind blew a cocoanut down from a tree and it fell upon the ground right beside the little wild Rabbit. Up he jumped in great fear for now he was sure that what he had dreaded was happening.