“Half-eaten”, said the Fox.
The Bear thought that a very queer name, but he hadn’t wondered long over it before he began to yawn and gape and fell asleep. Well, he hadn’t lain long before the Fox jumped up as he had done twice before, bawled out “yes” and ran off to the firkin, which this time he cleared right out. When he got back he had been bidden to barsel again, and when the Bear wanted to know the bairn’s name, he answered:
“Licked-to-the-bottom.”
After that they lay down again, and slept a long time; but then they were to go to the firkin to look at the butter, and when they found it eaten up, the Bear threw the blame on the Fox, and the Fox on the Bear; and each said the one had been at the firkin while the other slept.
“Well, well”, said Reynard, “we’ll soon find this out, which of us has eaten the butter. We’ll just lay down in the sunshine, and he whose cheeks and chaps are greasiest when we wake, he is the thief.”
Yes, that trial Bruin was ready to stand; and as he knew in his heart he had never so much as tasted the butter, he lay down without a care to sleep in the sun.
Then Reynard stole off to the firkin for a morsel of butter, which stuck there in a crack, and then he crept back to the Bear, and greased his chaps and cheeks with it; and then he, too, lay down to sleep as if nothing had happened.
So when they both woke, the sun had melted the butter, and the Bear’s whiskers were all greasy; and so it was Bruin after all, and no one else, who had eaten the butter.
TOM TOTHERHOUSE
Once on a time there was a Goody who had a deaf husband. A good, easy man he was, but that was just why she thought more of the lad next door, whom they called “Tom Totherhouse”. Now the lad that served the deaf man saw very well that the two had something between them, and one day he said to the Goody: