“Oh, that’s quite a accident!” Bruno began, so eagerly, that it was evident he had already propounded this very difficulty to the Cat. “It ’splained all that to me, while it were drinking the milk. It said ‘I teaches the Mouses new games: the Mouses likes it ever so much.’ It said ‘Sometimes little accidents happens: sometimes the Mouses kills theirselves.’ It said ‘I’s always welly sorry, when the Mouses kills theirselves.’ It said——”
“If it was so very sorry,” Sylvie said, rather disdainfully, “it wouldn’t eat the Mouses after they’d killed themselves!”
But this difficulty, also, had evidently not been lost sight of in the exhaustive ethical discussion just concluded. “It said——” (the orator constantly omitted, as superfluous, his own share in the dialogue, and merely gave us the replies of the Cat) “It said ‘Dead Mouses never objecks to be eaten.’ It said ‘There’s no use wasting good Mouses.’ It said ‘Wifful—’ sumfinoruvver. It said ‘And oo may live to say ‘How much I wiss I had the Mouse that then I frew away!’ It said——.”
“It hadn’t time to say such a lot of things!” Sylvie interrupted indignantly.
“Oo doosn’t know how Cats speaks!” Bruno rejoined contemptuously. “Cats speaks welly quick!”
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE PIG-TALE.
By this time the appetites of the guests seemed to be nearly satisfied, and even Bruno had the resolution to say, when the Professor offered him a fourth slice of plum-pudding, “I thinks three helpings is enough!”
Suddenly the Professor started as if he had been electrified. “Why, I had nearly forgotten the most important part of the entertainment! The Other Professor is to recite a Tale of a Pig—I mean a Pig-Tale,” he corrected himself. “It has Introductory Verses at the beginning, and at the end.”
“It ca’n’t have Introductory Verses at the end, can it?” said Sylvie.
“Wait till you hear it,” said the Professor: “then you’ll see. I’m not sure it hasn’t some in the middle, as well.” Here he rose to his feet, and there was an instant silence through the Banqueting-Hall: they evidently expected a speech.