lish brute is as deaf as a post and is
always barking at nothing,' and he refused to get up.

The next morning Susan got up early to go to church at the neighbouring
town, and she thought she would take some sausages to her aunt who lived
there. But when she went to her larder, she found all the sausages gone,
and a great hole in the floor. She called out to her husband, 'I was
perfectly right. Thieves have been here last night, and they have not
left a single sausage. Oh! if you had only got up when I asked you to!'

Then Simon scratched his head and said, 'I can't understand it at all. I
certainly never believed the old dog was so quick at hearing.'

But Susan replied, 'I always told you our old dog was the best dog in
the world--but as usual you thought you knew so much better. Men are the
same all the world over.'

And the fox scored a point too, for he had carried away the sausages
himself!

Grimm.

_THE STORY OF THE FISHERMAN AND HIS WIFE_

There was once a fisherman and his wife who lived together in a little
hut close to the sea, and the fisherman used to go down every day to
fish; and he would fish and fish. So he used to sit with his rod and
gaze into the shining water; and he would gaze and gaze.

[Illustration]

Now, once the line was pulled deep under the water, and when he hauled
it up he hauled a large flounder with it. The flounder said to him,
'Listen, fisherman. I pray you to let me go; I am not a real flounder, I
am an enchanted Prince. What good will it do you if you kill me--I shall
not taste nice? Put me back into the water and let me swim away.'

'Well,' said the man, 'you need not make so much noise about it; I am
sure I had much better let a flounder that can talk swim away.' With
these words he put him back again into the shining water, and the
flounder sank to the bottom, leaving a long streak of blood behind. Then
the fisherman got up, and went home to his wife in the hut.

'Husband,' said his wife, 'have you caught nothing to-day?'

'No,' said the man. 'I caught a flounder who said he was an enchanted
prince, so I let him swim away again.'

'Did you wish nothing from him?' said his wife.

'No,' said the man; 'what should I have wished from him?'

'Ah!' said the woman, 'it's dreadful to have to live all one's life in
this hut that is so small and dirty; you ought to have wished for a
cottage. Go now and call him; say to him that we choose to have a
cottage, and h