"WHAT will you have?" Mrs. Mousey asked Puss, Junior, as she opened the
cupboard door.
"I'll have a strawberry ice-cream soda," said Puss. So Mrs. Mousey
poured some red syrup into the glass and dropped in a ball of ice cream,
and after that she held the glass under a regular soda-fountain spigot
which was fastened to a cute little ice-box. "Fiz-z-z, fiz-z-z!" went
the water until the pink-colored foam almost ran over the edge of the
glass. But it didn't. Wasn't that lucky?
"I'll take a pink and white peppermint stick," said Mr. Rowley Frog, and
Mr. Rat said, "Cheese, if you please!" when Mrs. Mousey asked him what
he would have.
"But while they were all a merry-making,
Heigh-ho!" says Rowley.
"A cat and her kittens came tumbling in."
And, oh dear me! Puss dropped his soda-water glass, and it broke all to
smithereens. And then,
The cat she seized the rat by the crown:
Heigh-ho! says Rowley.
The kittens they pulled the little mouse down.
And after that the cat jumped through the open window with the rat and
disappeared around the house, and the kittens ran out of the door with
poor Mrs. Mouse.
[Illustration]
Puss jumped through the window, but before he could catch them they ran
into a hole just big enough for them to squeeze through, and Puss was
left outside, wondering what to do. The old cat was nowhere to be seen.
She had taken good care to get out of sight, for she knew that Puss,
Junior, would take Mr. Rat away from her if he ever caught her.
"This put Mr. Frog in a terrible fright,
Heigh-ho, says Rowley!
He took up his hat, and he wished them good night."
"I'll go home to mother," he said when he reached the roadway. "I am
getting homesick. I think the old pond is the best place for me."
"Home, sweet home, in the dear old pond,
That is the place for me.
I'll never go even a foot beyond,
I'll sit there and croak, and never will smoke,
In my pond by the grassy lea!"
"That's right," said Puss, as he hurried along with Rowley, who, now
that he had made up his mind, could not get home fast enough.
"A wise frog stays in his bog,
And sits and croaks upon his log."