"Desist!" cried the Rabbit, "or I shall end your life without delay. I repeat, what excuse can you offer for having so wickedly broken the terms of our agreement? You have tried to rob me of my life and my money. Make your defence." "There was no written agreement," answered the Mouse shamelessly. "Each was at liberty to understand it in his own way." "Most wicked of animals, you are not fit to live," cried the Rabbit with disgust. "Your moments are numbered." Then before the Mouse could offer any protest, the Rabbit bit his head right off and swallowed it. "You will observe," said the Rabbit to the Owl with dignity, "that I still maintain my proper position in the eyes of the world as a Welsh rare-bit, but the Mouse, owing to his misdeeds, is now in the contemptible state of the biter bit. Such is the end of the wicked. "As for you," he continued to the Sentry, who, with his boastful spirit crushed, stood trembling in the Sentry-box; "as for you, you have seen too much of the world and its ways. It would be better for you to see a little less of it for a time." Then, according to his intention, the Rabbit beat the Sentry about the head until he could not see out of his eyes. "It now only remains to deal with the Horse. I go to give him the due reward of his deeds," the Rabbit remarked, taking up his drum and preparing to leave. But pausing a moment he added to the Owl: "With regard to you, my good friend, if ever an opportunity arises by which I can show you my gratitude for your kind services, rest assured that I shall eagerly avail myself of it." Now, the next morning the woman who keeps this shop spoke severely to her own little girl. "You have been touching the toys and damaging them," she said with anger. "See what mischief you have done! You have knocked off the head of this mouse--and, what is more, I can't find it anywhere,--you have rubbed all the paint off this sentry's face, and you have broken the glass eyes of this brown horse. You shall be punished." The little girl began to whimper. "I have not hurt the toys," she said. "I have never touched them since you put me to bed for breaking the baby doll." The woman looked puzzled: "If you say you haven't, you haven't, I suppose," she said, "for I know you are a truthful child. Then how has it happened? I shouldn't think any customer would do it without my noticing. I can't understand it." Nor can she to this day. But we can: you, the Rabbit, the Owl, the Sentry, the Horse, and myself. But not the Mouse, for he has lost his head. CHAPTER III Here the little Marionette paused. "That is all," she said. "What a good thing that the Mouse had his head bitten off," said the little girl thoughtfully. "It was just as well," the Marionette answered, "since he could use it to no better purpose." "Some of the toys were very wicked in that story, I think; dreadfully wicked." "I think the same. They were bad, wicked toys, with bad, wicked ways."