"Does your little Boy Blue go to sleep in a haystack?"
"No, my dear," laughingly replied his mother, "but his father did. And that's the horn he used to blow in the early morn to call the cows and the woolly sheep when under the haystack he'd fallen asleep."
"I met him once, a long time ago," said little Puss, Junior. "I remember the place quite well. He carried me on his shoulder over to see little Miss Muffet who sat on a tuffet, and she gave us some curds and whey till a horrid old spider sat down beside us and frightened her away."
"And so you were the little cat who was with him, were you?" said little Boy Blue's mother.
But Puss didn't answer, for he had fallen fast asleep and was dreaming that he was once more with his dear father, the famous Puss in Boots.
ALPHABET TOWN
NOW let me see. Where did I leave off in the last story? Oh yes, I remember now. Little Puss, Junior, had fallen asleep in the house where little Boy Blue lived. Yes, Puss had fallen asleep in front of the fireplace over which hung the silver horn that called the cows from the fields of corn. Well, the next morning the horn began blowing all by itself, and this, of course, woke up everybody in the house; so Puss washed his face and hands and curled his whiskers and after that he pulled on his red-topped boots and was ready for breakfast. Then Mrs. Boy Blue came downstairs with little Boy Blue. He was only three years old, but he could blow a horn, though I don't think the cows paid much attention to him, for they knew he was only doing it in fun, you see.
Well, after breakfast, Puss, Junior, bade them all good-by and mounted his Good Gray Horse, and by and by, after he had ridden many a mile, he came to a very queer place—it was called Alphabet Town. But the strangest thing of all was that the alphabet was alive. Yes, from A to Z it was alive, and Puss was so interested that he drew rein at the gates of Alphabet Town because, he said to himself, "If I expect to get through Mother Goose Land I must learn the alphabet, and the sooner I learn it the sooner I shall see my dear father." So he went up to the schoolhouse and this is what he learned: