“BITE HIM!”
“What are you doing that for?” said the king of the rats. “Didn’t you hear me tell you to begin?”
“But I don’t want to begin,” said Tommy Smith.
“Why not?” said the king; and all the other rats stopped eating, and said, “Why not?”
“Because I don’t like eating in the night,” Tommy Smith answered; “and, besides, I can’t eat what rats eat.”
At this there was a great commotion, and the king of the rats cried out, “Bite him!” in a very loud and shrill voice.
Oh, how fast little Tommy Smith ran! “The caves!” he thought. “They lead to all the kitchens of the world, so one of them must lead to ours.” He got to one, but the rats were close behind him. He could see their eyes shining in the dark as he looked back. “Oh dear!” he said; “I shall be caught. It’s getting narrower and narrower, and, of course, it must be a rat’s hole at the other end. Ah, there! I’m stuck, and I shall be bitten all over.” As he said this, he kicked and squeezed as hard as he could, and, to his great surprise, he found that the sides of the rat-hole were quite soft—in fact, they felt very like bedclothes; and the next moment his head was on his own pillow, and the old clock on the staircase struck two.
“Well, good-night,” said a squeaky little voice, that he seemed to have heard before. “If you will go to sleep, I can’t help it, but I think the way in which little boys turn night into day is quite dreadful.”