Now the elephant really began to be afraid. “Oh, well, it was only a joke that the whale and I played on him. Go back and tell him so. Tell him it was only a joke, and that I am not angry with him now. Then tell him he may eat wherever he pleases, for I would not want to annoy such a little animal as he is.”
So the rabbit, still speaking like the deer, said he would, and, moaning and limping, he turned and crawled back the way he had come. But when he was safely out of sight, he fell down in the dust of the road and laughed and laughed till he was sick with laughing.
CHERRY
(From the English)
THERE was once a poor laborer who had so many children that he was hardly able to buy food and clothing for them. For this reason, as soon as they grew old enough, they went out into the world to shift for themselves. One after another they left their home, until at last only the youngest one, Cherry by name, was left. She was the prettiest of all the children. Her hair was as black as jet, her cheeks as red as roses, and her eyes so merry and sparkling that it made one smile even to look at her.
Every few weeks one or another of the children who were out at service came back to visit their parents, and they looked so much better fed, and so much better clothed than they ever had looked while they were at home that Cherry began to long to go out in the world to seek her fortune, too.
“Just see,” she said to her mother; “all my sisters have new dresses and bright ribbons, while I have nothing but the old patched frocks they have outgrown. Let me go out to service to earn something for myself.”
“No, no,” answered her mother. “You are our youngest, and your father would never be willing to have you go, and you would find it very different out there in the world from here, where everyone loves you and cares for you.”