“I love to skip and jump and ,
I love to hear firecrackers pop,
I love to play
The whole long day,
I love to spin my humming top.”
That’s what Bully sang, and if there had been a second, or a third, or a forty-’leventh verse he would have sung that too, as he felt so good. Well, after he had sung the one verse he on some more, and pretty soon he came to the place where the mouse lady lived, whose basket of chips Bully had once picked up, when she hurt her foot on a thorn. I guess you remember about that story.
“Ah, how to you do, Bully?” asked the mouse lady, as the frog boy hopped along.
“Thank you, I am very well,” he answered politely. “I hope you are feeling pretty good.”
“Well,” she made answer, “I might feel better. I have a little touch of cat-and-mouse-trap fever, but I think if I stay in my hole and take plenty of toasted cheese, I’ll be better. But here is a nice sugar cookie for you,” and with that the nice mouse lady went to the cupboard, got a cookie, and gave it to the frog boy.
Bully ate it without getting a single on the floor, which was very good of him, and then, saving a piece of the cookie for his brother Bawly, he hopped on, after bidding the mouse lady good-by and hoping that she would soon be better.
Along and along hopped Bully, and all of a sudden the big giant jumped out of the bushes—Oh, excuse me, if you please! there is no giant in this story. The giant went back to the circus, but I’ll tell you a story about him as soon as I may. As Bully was hopping along, all of a sudden out from behind a bush there jumped a , ugly wolf, and he had gotten out of his circus cage again, and was looking around for something to eat.[Pg 131]
“Ah, ha! At last I have found something!” cried the wolf, as he made a spring for Bully, and he caught the frog boy under his paws and held him down to the earth, just like a cat catches a mouse.
“Oh, let me go! Please let me go! You are squeezing the breath out of me!” cried poor Bully.
“Indeed I will not let you go!” replied the wolf, real unpleasant-like. “I have been looking for something to eat all day and now that I’ve found it I’m not going to let you go. No, indeed, and some horseradish in a bottle besides.”
“Are you really going to eat me?” asked Bully, sorrowfully.
“I certainly am,” replied the wolf. “You just watch me. Oh, no, I forgot. You can’t see me eat you, but you can feel me, which is much the same thing.”
Then the wolf sharpened his teeth on a sharpening stone, and he got ready to eat up the frog boy. Now Bully didn’t want to be eaten, and I don’t blame him a bit; do you? He wanted to go play ball, and have a lot of fun with his friends, and he was thinking what a queer world this is, where you can be happy and singing a song, and eating a sugar cookie one minute, and the next minute be caught by a wolf. But that’s the way it generally is.
Then, as Bully thought of how good the sugar cookie was he asked the wolf:
“Will you let me go for a piece of cookie, Mr. Wolf?”
“Let me see the cookie,”
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