"Well, I wish that you would," sighed the tiger hopefully. "I never cared for music with my meals. Now don't be frightened, I won't hurt you—much. If you were not so tall, I'd swallow you whole."
"Oh!" groaned the prisoner falling upon his knees, "Have you no heart? No conscience? Are you really cruel enough to devour a poor fellow like me?" At each word, the Hungry Tiger recoiled a bit further.
"But what can I do? I've nothing else to eat and it is the Rash law that you should perish. By the way, what was your crime?" he asked sadly. Now that the time for eating a live man was at hand, he found himself curiously disturbed.
"I'm a singer," began the prisoner, in a choked and frightened voice. "This afternoon, hoping to earn a few Rash pence, I stopped beneath the palace balcony and—" Straightening up and throwing out his chest, the singer burst into tears and song, mingling them so thoroughly the Hungry Tiger was soon crying like a baby himself. Without the tears, the song went something like this:
"Oh why must lovely roses die?
Oh why, snif! snif! Oh why, say why?
Oh why must hay be cut and mown
In its first hey-day? Groan, snif, groan!
And why must grass be trodden down
And trees cut up to build a town?