“Wait, wait, I will help you yet,” said the cat, “wait, wait, I will help you yet!”
On the third day they set out again, the cat in the lead, and Ebe following. After a time it occurred to him to go back and let the mice out of the house, so that they would not be altogether starved in the old hut; and the cat tripped on alone. After she had gone her way, tipp, tapp, tipp, tapp, for a while, she came to a dense pine forest, and there she met a father bear, a mother bear and a baby bear. The cat crept softly up to them, and all at once she was hanging by her claws to the father bear’s head.
“If you do not go where I want you to, I will scratch out your eyes, and drive you over rock and precipice!” said the cat, and spit and arched her back. Then the father bear did not dare do anything save what the cat wished, and now they dashed past Ebe, who had just carried all the young mice over the threshold, like a storm, over stick and stone, from cliff to cliff, so that the earth trembled and shook. The king was just standing in the hallway, and was not a little surprised to see such guests arriving.
“I am to deliver a kind greeting from Ebe, and ask whether my lord king might not care to have this bear for a general or royal counselor,” said the cat. The king was more than pleased to secure such a creature for his nearest adviser, who could doubt it.
“Tell him that I am much obliged, but that I do not at all know how to show my appreciation,” said the king.
“Well, he would like to marry your youngest daughter!” said the cat.
“Yes, but that is asking a good deal,” said the king. “He really ought to pay me a visit.”
“Ebe does not enter such plain houses,” said the cat.
“Has he a handsomer castle than this?” asked the king.
“Handsomer? Why, your castle seems like the shabbiest hut in comparison with his!” was the cat’s reply.