Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/162

 "Where are you, Tommy, my darling? where are you?" cried his mother, dropping her milking.

"Here, mother," he shouted, "here, in the red cow's mouth."

At this his poor mother began to cry and wring her hands, looking helplessly at the cow. But what was her joy! The cow, surprised at the odd noise in her throat, opened her mouth and let Tom drop out. Quick as a flash his mother caught him up before he could fall to the ground, and she ran home with him.

TOM THUMB

One day when Tom went into the fields to drive the cattle with a whip of barley straw his father had given him, he slipped and rolled into one of the furrows. A raven flying overhead picked him up and flew with him to the top of a giant's castle near the sea, and there left him.

Tom did not know what to do. But this was not the worst of it. He heard a heavy tread, tramp! tramp! and out strode Grumbo, the giant who owned the castle. He saw Tom, picked him up and gulped him down in a twinkling, as if he were a pill. But in a minute he was sorry. For Tom began to kick and jump about so that the giant could not stand