"Well, I'll try you," says his master; "come to me at dinner-time."

So come dinner-time, the man came, and his master took him into a room
where the table was a-set with good things of all sorts. And he said:
"Now, you can eat as much as ever you like from any of the dishes on the
table; but don't touch the covered dish in the middle till I come back."
And with that the master went out of the room and left the man there all
by himself.

So the man sat down and helped himself, and ate some o' this dish and
some o' that, and enjoyed himself finely. But after awhile, as his
master didn't come back, he began to look at the covered dish, and to
wonder whatever was in it. And he wondered more and more, and he says to
himself, "It must be something very nice. Why shouldn't I just look at
it? I won't touch it. There can't be any harm in just peeping." So at
last he could hold back no longer, and he lifted up the cover a tiny
bit; but he couldn't see anything. Then he lifted it up a bit more, and
out popped a mouse. The man tried to catch it; but it ran away and
jumped off the table and he ran after it. It ran first into one corner,
and then, just as he thought he'd got it, into another, and under the
table, and all about the room. And the man made such a clatter, jumping
and banging and running round after the mouse, a-trying to catch it,
that at last his master came in.

"Ah!" he said; "never you blame Adam again, my man!"




The Children in the Wood