The young girl, seeing the hermit, ran down the hill to meet him.
"Well, father," said she, with glistening eyes, flushed cheeks, parted lips, and panting breast, "and my husband, where is my husband?"
"Here," said the anchorite; and he took the Rat out of his wallet. "Here he is; allow me to introduce to you a husband mightier than the Moon, more powerful than the Sun, stronger than the Clouds, more valiant than the Simoon, greater than the high Mountain; in fact, a husband well worthy of you, my daughter."
The eyes of the young girl opened wider and wider in mute astonishment.
"He's a fine specimen of his kind, isn't he?"
"I daresay he is," said she, surveying him with the eye of a connoisseur; "and cooked in honey, he'd be a dainty bit."
"And he's a hermit, into the bargain."
"But," added the girl, ruefully, "if you intended me to marry a rat, was it not quite useless to have turned me into a woman?"
The hermit stroked his beard, pensively, for a while, and was apparently lost in deep meditation.
"My daughter," replied he, after a lengthy pause, "your words are Gospel; I have never thought of all this till now; you see clearly that 'the ways of Providence are not our ways.'"