The Badger agreed without further words. He slipped into the trap, and was about to pull the meat from the hook, when—snap!—his forefoot was fast in the trap. The Badger broke out into a howl of distress, “Help, uncle, help! I am lost!”
Reinecke ran quickly to the trap, but instead of freeing the Badger he at once began to gnaw the meat.
“Just have a little patience,” he said, “till I have eaten this morsel before some one comes from the village. Then I will pull your leg out of the trap.”
Now Graybeard saw plainly that the Master had played a trick upon him, and he quickly seized him by the nape of the neck. At this moment the moujik came running up, crying from afar, “Hold on, my falcon-badger! By my faith, I will not rumple a hair of your head!”
So the moujik killed the Fox and stripped off his skin, saying to the Badger, “You may go free; his skin is worth five kopeks, but yours only two. Go, in God’s name!”
“It wasn’t fair of Reinecke,” observed the little boy.
“No, it wasn’t fair, and so he got punished,” said the grandmother.
The little boy was silent for a few minutes. Then he said:
“Little grandma, I am not patient yet.”