R. NESBIT BAIN
n a certain forest there once lived a fox, and near to the fox lived a man who had a cat that had been a good mouser in its youth, but was now old and half blind.
[1] From Cossack Fairy Tales (London: George G. Harrap and Company).
The man didn't want Puss any longer, but not liking to kill it he took it out into the forest and lost it there. Then the fox came up and said: "Why, Mr Shaggy Matthew, how d'ye do? What brings you here?"
"Alas!" said Pussy, "my master loved me as long as I could bite, but now that I can bite no longer and have left off catching mice—and I used to catch them finely once—he doesn't like to kill me, but he has left me in the wood, where I must perish miserably."
"No, dear Pussy!" said the fox; "you leave it to me, and I'll help you to get your daily bread."
"You are very good, dear little sister foxey!" said the cat, and the fox built him a little shed with a garden round it to walk in.
Now one day the hare came to steal the man's cabbage. "Kreem-kreem-kreem!" he squeaked. But the cat popped his head out of the window, and when he saw the hare he put up his back and stuck up his tail and said: "Ft-t-t-t-t-Frrrrrrr!"