“Fie!” said the rat again. “Well, you shall soon see what I can do.” And almost as he said this, he was on the dresser, and from there he gave a little jump on to the window-sill, and sat down, with his long tail hanging over the edge of it. Now the neck of the bottle came almost up to the edge of the window-sill, and the rat’s tail was as long as the bottle.
“Oh, I see!” cried Tommy Smith.
“You will in a minute,” said the rat, and he drew up his tail, and began to feel about with the tip of it till he had got it right inside the mouth of the bottle. Then he let it down again until it was dipped more than an inch deep into the oil at the bottom—for the bottle was not quite half full.
“Oh, how clever!” cried Tommy Smith, clapping his hands.
“I should think so,” said the rat, as he drew out his tail, and then, putting the end of it to his mouth, he began to lick off the delicious oil. “You say that I have not a pair of hands,” he went on. “That is true, but you see I have a tail, and I make it do just as well.”
“So you do,” said Tommy Smith; “and I see that you are a very clever animal indeed.”
“We are clever in many other ways besides that,” said the rat. “Oil, you know, is not the only thing which we care about. We like eggs for breakfast, just as much as you do, and when we find any, we take them to our holes, even if they are a long way off. Now, how do you think we do that?”
“Let me see,” said Tommy Smith. “You have no hands, and I don’t think you could carry an egg in your tail. I think you must push it in front of you with your nose and paws.”
“Oh, we can do that, of course,” said the rat, “but it takes so long, and, besides, the eggs might get broken. We have better ways than that. Sometimes, if there are a great many of us, we all sit in a row, and pass the eggs along from one to the other in our fore-paws. But we have another way which is cleverer still, and as there is a basket of eggs in that cupboard there, I don’t mind showing it you; for, between ourselves, when we do that trick, we like to have a little boy in the kitchen at nights to look at us. But, first, I must call a friend of mine.” The rat then gave rather a loud squeak, and out another rat came running; but Tommy Smith didn’t see where it came from.