Page:Indian Fairy Tales (Stokes, 1879).djvu/113



HERE was a mouse who wanted something to eat; so he went to a garden, where many kinds of grain, and fruit, and cabbages, and other vegetables were growing. All round the garden the people to whom it belonged had planted a hedge of thorns, that nothing might get in. The mouse scrambled through the hedge, but great thorns pierced his tail, and he began to cry. He came out of the garden again through the hedge, and on his way home he met a barber.

"You must take out these thorns," said he to the barber. "I cannot," said the barber, "without cutting off your tail with my razor."

"Never mind cutting off my tail," said the mouse.

The barber cut off the mouse's tail. But the mouse was in a rage. He seized the razor and ran away with it. At this the poor barber was very unhappy and began to cry, for he had I no pice wherewith to buy another.

The mouse ran on and on until at last he came to another country, in which there were no knives or sickles to cut the grass with. There the mouse saw a man pulling the grass out of the ground with his hands.

"You will cut your hands," said the mouse.

"There are no knives here," said the man, "so I must pull up the grass in this way."

"You must take my razor then," said the mouse.