"'No,' I said. 'But I can make a noise like a cat. I learned that from an American catbird that lived in a cage in the stable where I spent last summer.'
"'Fine,' says he. 'Try that and see what happens!'
"So I went back to the children and found them weeping harder than ever. Then, keeping myself well hidden down near the ground among the bushes, I went 'Meow! Me-o-w!' real catlike.
"'Oh, Willie,' says the little girl to her brother, 'we're saved!' ('Saved,' mark you, when neither of the boobies was in the slightest danger!) 'We're saved!' says she. 'There's Tuffie, our cat, come for us. She'll show us the way home. Cats can always find their way home, can't they, Willie? Let's follow her!'"
For a moment Too-Too's plump sides shook with silent laughter as he recalled the scene he was describing.
"Then," said he, "I went a little further off, still taking great care that I shouldn't be seen, and I meowed again.
"'There she is!' said the little girl. 'She's calling to us. Come along, Willie.'
"Well, in that way, keeping ahead of them and calling like a cat, I finally led the children right out of the woods. They did a good deal of stumbling and the girl's long hair often got caught in the bushes. But I always waited for them if they were lagging behind. At last, when we gained the open fields, we saw three houses on the sky line, and the middle one was all lighted up and people with lanterns were running around it, hunting in all directions.
"When I had brought the children right up to this house their mother and father made a tremendous fuss, weeping over them, as though they had been saved from some terrible danger. In my opinion grown-up humans are even more stupid than the young ones. You'd think, from the way that mother and father carried on, that those children had been wrecked on a desert island or something, instead of spending a couple of hours in the pleasant woods.
"'How ever did you find your way, Willie?' asked the mother, wiping away her tears and smiling all over.