And they lived together until cold weather came, when they put up a stove to keep warm, and they planned to enjoy the long winter.
Now, not far off from the house lived the Wolf and his family, and his brother and his brother’s family.
And the Wolf and his brother saw the house which the Sheep and the Pig and the Goose and the Hare and the Cock had builded, and they talked together of how warm and comfortable it was, and the Wolf decided that they must get acquainted with their new neighbors.
So he made up an errand and went to the door and said he had come to ask for a light to his pipe; and while the door was held open he pushed himself inside.
Then all at once he found himself in a great confusion, for the Sheep butted him so hard that he fell against the stove; and the Pig gored and bit him; and the Goose nipped and pecked him; and the Hare ran about over the house, now on the floor and now aloft, so that the Wolf did not know who or what he was, and was scared out of his wits, and all the time the Cock perched on a top beam and flapped his wings and crowed and crowed.
By-and-by the Wolf managed to get near the door and to dash through it.
“Neighborhood makes for brotherhood,” said the Wolf’s brother. “You must have made good friends, since you remained so long. But what became of your errand, for you have neither pipe nor smoke?”
“Nice life makes pleasant company,” said the Wolf. “Such manners I never saw. For no sooner was I inside than the shoemaker flew at me with his last, and two smiths blew bellows and made the sparks fly, and beat and punched me with red-hot pincers, and tore great pieces out of my body, the hunter kept running about trying to find his gun, and it is well for me that he did not, for I should never have come out alive; and all the while a butcher sat up on a beam and flapped his arms and sang out to the others: ‘Put a hook into him! Put a hook into him and drag him thither!’ so it was all I could do to get out alive!”
“Well,” said his brother, “we can’t choose in this wicked world, and an unbidden guest sometimes gets bad treatment. But I think that we will be very well advised to let these new neighbors alone.”
So the Wolf, and the Wolf’s family, and the Wolf’s brother and his brother’s family, let the Sheep and the Pig and the Goose and the Hare and the Cock alone, and they lived very happily in their house in the woods.