THE MAGIC EGG.

   

HERE was once upon a time a lark
who was the Tsar among the birds,
and he took unto himself as his
Tsaritsa a little shrew mouse. They
had a field all to themselves, which

they sowed with wheat, and when the wheat grew

up they divided it between them, when they
found that there was one grain over! The mouse
said: “Let me have it!” But the lark said:

“No, let me have it!”—‘* What’s to be done?”

thought they. They would have liked to take counsel

of some one, but they had no parents or kinsmen,
nobody at all to whom they could go and ask
advice in the matter. At last the mouse said: “ At
any rate, let me have the first nibble!” The lark

Tsar agreed to this; but the little mouse fastened

her teeth in it and ran off into her hole with it, and

there ate it all up. At this the Tsar lark was wroth,