158 



THE RAT 



to haul one out from under his stone, by what 

 ought to have been the scrufF of his neck, only he 

 hardly had anything worth calling a neck. How 

 he kicked and wriggled when I said, ' Come along 

 with me, young fellow, behind those nice boards !' 

 I soon stopped that when I got my big front teeth 

 to work ; his shell was not so very crackly, and I 

 knew almost at once that I was going to like him. 

 One good bite killed him, and then I ate him out 

 of house and home, if you can call his shell his 

 house. My word ! he was good, and when I had 

 finished off my meal with a few delicious w^ater- 

 cresses, I felt that I had much reason to be con- 

 tented with my humble lot. 



T never got tired of this item of my varied menu, 

 but variety is always pleasing, as a cousin of mine 

 once said when he married his seventeenth wife, 

 and so I went searching about the banks pretty 

 promiscuously day after day, and picked up many 

 pleasing trifles. A pair of fat water-hens had built 

 a great clumsy nest in a bed of rushes, and I soon 

 clambered into that. There, to my joy, I found 

 eight fine spotted eggs, all nice and warm, for the 

 old lady had just begun to sit on them, and only 

 left the nest over one side of it as I came climbing 

 up the other side. She was wise, for I should 



