LITTLE DOG AND BIG DOG

Once upon a time there were two dogs who were great friends. One of them was small and one was large, and they were called Little Dog and Big Dog all the days of their lives, and had no other names.

Little Dog barked at everything he saw. He barked at the cat and he barked at the kittens; he barked at the cow and he barked at the calf; he barked at his own shadow; and he even barked at the moon in the sky with a "Bow-wow-wow!" and a "Bow-wow-wow!"

Big Dog had a very loud bark, "Bow-wow! Bow-wow!" but he barked only when he had something to say. And everybody listened to him.

Now one day as the two dogs sat together in the sunshine, Big Dog said to Little Dog:—

"Come, let us go to see our friend, the king."

Little Dog thought this was a splendid plan, and they started at once.

Big Dog walked along the road with his tail curled over his back, and his head held high. "There is no need of haste," he said, but Little Dog thought there must be.

"I shall get there first," he called, as he scampered ahead, but presently he came back as fast as he had gone.

"Oh, Big Dog, Big Dog," he said, "we cannot go to see the king."

"Why not?" asked Big Dog. "Has he gone away from home?"

"I know nothing about that," answered Little Dog, who was almost out of breath, "but a little farther on there is a great river, and we can never get across."

But Big Dog would not turn back. "I must see this great river," he said, and he walked on as quietly as before. Little Dog followed him, and when they came to the river Big Dog jumped in, splish! splash! and began to swim.

"Wait, wait," cried Little Dog, but Big Dog only answered, "Don't be afraid."

So in jumped Little Dog, splish! splash! too, for he did not want to be left behind. He was terribly frightened, but he paddled himself along with his four feet just as he saw Big Dog doing, and when he was safe across the river, which was not half so wide as he had thought, he barked at it as if he had never been afraid at all.

"Bow-wow-wow-wow! You cannot keep us from the king," he said, and he was off and away before Big Dog had shaken the water from his coat. But in less time than it takes to tell it, Big Dog spied him running back with his tail hanging down and his ears drooping.

"Oh, Big Dog, Big Dog!" he cried. "We cannot go to see the king, for in the wood yonder there is a bear, and she will eat us both for her supper. I heard her say so myself."

Then Big Dog made haste to the wood, barking loudly:—

"Bow-wow! Bow-wow! I am not afraid! I am not afraid!" and when the bear heard him she ran to her home as fast as she could.

"I can eat honey for my supper," she said; and the two dogs saw no more of her.

Now by this time Little Dog had run so fast and barked so much that he was tired. "I do not want to go to see the king," he said; and he lay down in the road and put his head between his two front paws.

But Big Dog said, "I smell a bone," and Little Dog jumped up in a hurry again. Sniff! sniff!—where could it be? The two dogs put their noses close to the ground and followed the scent till they came to the turn of the road; and there sat a charcoal burner eating his supper of bread and mutton chops by his fire.

Little Dog wanted to run up and beg for something, but Big Dog would not go with him. "It is more polite to wait," he said; and he sat down on the other side of the road. Little Dog sat down beside him, and they waited and waited; but at last the man finished his chops and threw the bones to the dogs, which was just what Big Dog had hoped he would do. Oh, how good they tasted!

"Where shall we sleep to-night?" asked Little Dog, when he had eaten his share.

"Oh, never fear," answered Big Dog, "we will find a place;" and when they had gone on their way they very soon came to a house in the wood. The door was open, and Big Dog put his head inside to see if anybody was at home. Nobody lived there, however, but a barn swallow, so the dogs went in and lay down to rest on some hay in the corner.

"We must be off early," said Big Dog; but when they woke up next morning the door was fastened tight; for the wind had blown by in the night and slammed it into its place. When Big Dog saw this he was in great distress.

"Oh, Little Dog! Little Dog!" he cried. "I fear we can never go to see the king, for the door is closed, and there is no one to open it."

"But we can go through the hole under the door," answered Little Dog; and when Big Dog looked, there, sure enough, at the bottom of the door, where a board had rotted away, was a hole just large enough for a little dog to creep through. Little Dog put his nose through and his head through, and then wriggle, wriggle, he was out and barking merrily.

"Come on, Big Dog," he called; but Big Dog could not go. He could not even get his head through the hole.

"You must go on alone," he said to Little Dog, "and when you have come to the king's palace, and have told him about me, perhaps he will send me aid."

But Little Dog did not wait until he reached the king's palace to ask for help. "Bow-wow-wow-wow! Listen to me," he barked, as he ran down the road. "Big Dog, my friend, is shut up in the house in the wood, and cannot go to see the king. Bow-wow-wow-wow!"

At first there were only birds to hear him, but presently he saw a woodcutter with an axe on his shoulder.

"Bow-wow-wow-wow! Listen to me," barked Little Dog. "Big Dog, my friend, is shut up in the house in the wood and cannot go to see the king. Bow-wow-wow-wow!" But the woodcutter did not understand a word he said.

"Whew! whew!" he whistled, which meant, "Come, little doggie, follow me;" but Little Dog had no time to play.

He hurried on as fast as he could, and by and by he met the woodcutter's wife going to town with a basket of eggs on her arm. "Bow-wow-wow-wow! Listen to me. Big Dog, my friend, is shut up in the house in the wood, and cannot go to see the king," barked Little Dog. But the woodcutter's wife did not understand a word he said.

"You noisy little dog," she cried. "You have startled me so that it is a wonder every egg in my basket is not broken," and she shook her skirts to get rid of him.

"Nobody will listen to me," thought Little Dog, as he scampered on, but just then he spied a little boy with a bundle of sticks on his back. He was the woodcutter's little boy; and—do you believe it?—he understood every word that Little Dog said, and followed him to the house.

When they drew near they heard Big Dog calling for help:—

"Bow-wow! Bow-wow! Come and let me out. Come and let me out."

"Bow-wow! we are coming," answered Little Dog.

"We are coming," said the woodcutter's little boy; and the very next minute Big Dog was free.

The king's palace was not far from the wood, and the two dogs were soon at their journey's end. The king was so pleased to see them that he made a great feast for them, and invited the woodcutter's little boy because he was their friend.

After the feast Big Dog and Little Dog were sent home in the king's own carriage; and all the rest of their lives they were even better friends than before they went traveling together.

THE LITTLE KING'S RABBITS

One morning when the little king waked up, all of his pet rabbits were gone, and nobody, not even the owl who had been awake all night, knew anything about them. They were white rabbits with pink eyes and pink ears, and you can just imagine how the little king felt when he heard they were lost.

"Find my white rabbits and I will give you whatever you ask of me, even though it should be the crown from my head," he said to everybody who came to see him; and, of course, everybody started out at once to look for the rabbits.

The princes and princesses, the dukes and the duchesses, the counts and the countesses, and all the other fine ladies and gentlemen of the king's court went in carriages to the city to look for the rabbits, and presently they came back in great glee. They had not found the rabbits, but they had bought some made of candy at a confectioner's shop, and they were very much pleased with themselves.

"These are so cunning and sweet—much sweeter than real rabbits," they said, but the little king did not think so.

"They are fit for nothing but to be eaten," he said, and he had them carried away to the pantry.

The little king's soldiers felt very certain that the king in the next country had taken away the rabbits, so they marched over the hill to bring them back, beating their drums with a bum, bum, bum. Their uniforms were as red as a cock's comb, and they were as brave as lions, but they had to come home without the white rabbits. The king of the next country had never so much as seen the tips of their ears.

"King indeed," said the hunters. "The foxes have carried the rabbits away to their dens, and we will go and bring them back or know the reason why," and they hastened to the woods with their guns. Bang, bang—they, too, made a great noise, but it did no good. The king's rabbits were nowhere to be found.

The servants all went to the park. "If the rabbits are anywhere they are here," they said, and they told the park policeman about them.

"White rabbits with pink eyes and pink ears are not allowed in the park," he said indignantly, so the servants had to go home without the rabbits, as all the rest had done.

The king's gardener went to his garden in a hurry. "I'll not have a leaf left," he said to himself. But when he got to the garden every leaf was in place. The pink roses were just opening their buds in the sunshine, and the white pinks were nodding in the breezes, but not a sign of the white rabbits with pink eyes and pink ears did the gardener see.

The gardener's little daughter Peggy went to the rabbit hutch first of all. She knew that the rabbits were not there, of course, but she had to begin her search somewhere. Nobody, not even the little king himself, loved the white rabbits more than Peggy did. She knew their names, and how old they were, and what they liked best to eat. Every morning as soon as she had eaten her own breakfast she came up from the little cottage where she lived with her mother and father, to bring them lettuce and cabbage leaves. It made her very sad to see the empty hutch, and two bright tears shone in her eyes.

Before they had time to roll down her cheeks Peggy saw something that surprised her very much. It was a hole in the corner of the fence that was built around the rabbit hutch. As soon as she saw it she dried her eyes, and ran through the gate into the road behind the barnyard. The rabbits were not there, but in the dust that lay thick and white along the road were ever so many queer little marks that looked like the prints of rabbit feet.

"Oh, so this is the way they went," said Peggy, and she followed the tracks as long as she could see them.

By and by she came to a cool green lane that led from one side of the road. That was the very place for rabbits, Peggy thought.

"Bunny, bunny, bunny," she called as she peeped in. Not a rabbit or a rabbit track was to be seen, however, and Peggy was hurrying away when she spied by the path a bunch of green clover all tattered and torn, just as if—just as if—

"Rabbit teeth have been nibbling these leaves," cried Peggy joyfully, and she hastened down the lane expecting to see the rabbits at every turn. But she did not find them, though she looked behind every tree, and into every nook and corner from one end of the lane to the other.

There were two roads at the other end of the lane. One led over the hill to the next country. There were many footprints upon it, but they were only the ones the soldiers had left when they marched away to find the white rabbits. The other road ran by the woods where the hunters had hurried. Grass grew upon it, and flowers nodded over it, but there was not a single nibbled leaf to show that the rabbits had been there.

"Dear me, which way shall I go?" said Peggy; but she had scarcely spoken when a breeze blew by. It had been blowing over somebody's garden. Peggy knew that as soon as it passed.

"I smell cabbages," she cried, and away she ran by the woods, and through the flowers, till she came to an old woman's cabbage patch. And there, eating cabbage leaves to their hearts' content, sat the little king's rabbits! Peggy ran home as fast as she had come; and great was the rejoicing in the king's palace when she had told her news.

"I will give you whatever you ask, even should it be the crown from my head," the little king said to her; and all the fine ladies and gentlemen crowded around to hear what she would say.

"A carriage and horses," whispered one.

"A bag of gold," said another.

"A house and land," cried a third, for they all wanted to help her choose.

But Peggy knew what she wanted without anybody's help.

"If you please, your majesty," she said, making the king a curtsey, "I should like a white rabbit for my own."

And—do you believe it?—the little king gave her two!

THE SNOWMAN

Once upon a time there was a man who was made of snow. He had sticks for his arms, and coals for his eyes; his nose was made of an icicle, and his mouth was a bit of bent twig, which turned up at the ends, so he looked as if he were smiling.

"He's the finest snowman we've ever seen," said the children who made him; and they joined hands and danced around him till their mother called them in to supper.

"Good-by," they called to him as they climbed the fence that divided the field from the yard. "Good-by. We will bring you a hat to-morrow."

There were a half dozen of the children, and the youngest of them was a little boy who had never helped to make a snowman before. He thought of this one all the time he was eating his supper, and even after he had gone to bed that night. He knew just how the snowman looked with his smiling mouth and stick arms.

"I wish we had taken him a hat to-night," he thought, as his eyelids dropped down like two little curtains over his eyes.

"Archoo! archoo! I wish that you had," said something outside the window; and—do you believe it?—it was the snowman sneezing as hard as he could!

"This is what comes of standing out in the cold bareheaded," he said. "I shall sneeze my head off—I know I shall. Archoo! archoo! archoo!"

"Dear me!" said the little boy. "I will get you a hat but it will have to be my sailor, for I wear my new hat to church and to parties, and my everyday cap will not fit you, I am afraid,—we made your head so large."

"The sailor will do nicely," said the snowman, "if I may have it at once. As it is, I am catching my death of cold. Archoo! archoo! archoo!"

When the little boy heard this, he jumped out of bed and ran to the cupboard and got the sailor hat from the top shelf and gave it to the snowman.

"How do I look in it?" he asked as soon as he had put it on.

"Well enough," answered the moon, who had been watching all the while; "but you will have to make haste if you want to go anywhere before daylight."

"Don't you hear what the moon is saying?" said the snowman to the little boy. "What are you waiting for?"

"Am I going anywhere?" asked the child.

"Of course," answered the snowman. "Why shouldn't you go?"

The little boy could not think of an answer to this; and the next thing he knew he was out of the window with the snowman.

"Where are we going?" asked he.

"Why," said the snowman hurrying away into the street, "I have never thought of that, but since you speak of it I think we had better go to the Winter King's palace, and ask him if he cannot do something to keep the sun from shining to-morrow."

"Oh!" said the little boy, for his mother had promised that he might go to his grandmother's if the day was fine. He had no time to say anything about this, however, for just then the snowman cried out:—

"I have dropped one of my eyes, and I cannot go on without it."

"Dear me, dear me!" said the little boy. "How shall we ever find it?"

But while he was talking, a little dog that he knew very well came by. His name was Fido, and he could find anything that was lost. He had found the little ball when it rolled under the house, and his master's overshoes when everybody else had failed; and when he heard of the lost eye he started back at once to look for it.

"Don't worry," said the little boy, "Fido will find it;" and sure enough, in the twinkle of a star he was back with the coal in his mouth! The little boy put it in its place as quickly as he could, for the snowman seemed to be in a hurry.

"Didn't you see that we were at a baker's shop?" he said. "I know I must have been near the oven, too, for one of my ears is almost melted off."

"Why, you haven't any ears!" said the little boy. "We did not know how to make them."

"No ears?" cried the snowman. "Then how do I hear what you say? But there now, you are only a little boy, and cannot know everything. Besides, here we are at the palace, and you must be quiet."

The little boy had thought he was passing the schoolhouse where his big brothers and sisters went to school, but when he went inside he saw that he was wrong, and the snowman was right, for in the place where the teacher's desk should have been, was a throne; and on the throne sat the Winter King with icicles in his beard.

As soon as he saw the snowman and the little boy, he began to talk very fast:—

"What has this little boy been doing? Why isn't he in bed? Come here, Jack Frost, and tickle his toes."

"Oh! no, no," cried the snowman. "He has done nothing wrong. He is one of my best friends, and I have brought him here with me to ask you not to let the sun shine to-morrow. I don't want to melt."

"Ah! hum! ha!" said the king. "I don't know about that. You will have to melt sometime, won't you?"

"Of course," said the snowman; "but I'd like to last as long as I can." It made the little boy very sad to hear him talk in this way. He thought he would rather not go to his grandmother's than to risk the snowman in the sun.

"We are very fond of him," he said to the king. "He's the finest snowman we've ever seen, and he looks just as if he were smiling."

"So he does," said the king, looking at the snowman again; "and since you ask it I'll tell you what I will do. I cannot keep the sun from shining, but I will ask the North Wind to freeze the snowman, and perhaps he will last anyhow."

When the snowman heard this he began to dance, and as the little boy had hold of one of his stick arms he had to dance too. Together they danced out of the Winter King's palace, down the streets, into the field, where they found the North Wind waiting for them.

The first thing he did was to blow the hat from the snowman's head.

"Archoo! archoo!" sneezed the snowman. "I know I shall catch cold."

And "archoo!" sneezed the little boy; and he sneezed so loud that he waked himself up, for—do you believe it?—he had been asleep and dreaming all the time!

One part of his dream came true, though, for when he looked out of the window, the next morning, there stood the snowman in the field frozen hard.