But the Man replied, “Friend, what an idea! I haven’t said a word to any one.”
“Silence!” interrupted the Bear. “I was listening under your window.”
Then the Man thought to himself, “Well, the cat is out of the bag, sure enough. She knows the whole story.”
“And now,” said Mrs. Petz, “it is all up with you.”
Now little Master Reinecke was listening to all this, and he rustled in the bushes with his tail, and cried:
Man, Man!
Wit in the head
And a club in the hand!
For, in fact, the moujik had a mighty ox-goad in his hand, and he stood there quaking with fear of the enraged She-bear, and trying to contrive how he should get out of the scrape. Reinecke never stopped crying:
Man, Man!