So she made a meal of him.
If this fable does not teach that a rat gets no profit by lying, I should be pleased to know what it does teach.
III.
A frog who had been sitting up all night in neighbourly converse with an echo of elegant leisure, went out in the grey of the morning to obtain a cheap breakfast. Seeing a tadpole approach,
"Halt!" he croaked, "and show cause why I should not eat you."
The tadpole stopped and displayed a fine tail.
"Enough," said the frog: "I mistook you for one of us; and if there is anything I like, it is frog. But no frog has a tail, as a matter of course."
While he was speaking, however, the tail ripened and dropped off, and its owner stood revealed in his edible character.
"Aha!" ejaculated the frog, "so that is your little game! If, instead of adopting a disguise, you had trusted to my mercy, I should have spared you. But I am down upon all manner of deceit."
And he had him down in a moment.
Learn from this that he would have eaten him anyhow.
IV.
An old man carrying, for no obvious reason, a sheaf of sticks, met another donkey whose cargo consisted merely of a bundle of stones.
"Suppose we swop," said the donkey.
"Very good, sir," assented the old man; "lay your load upon my shoulders, and take off my parcel, putting it upon your own back."
The donkey complied, so far as concerned his own encumbrance, but neglected to remove that of the other.
"How clever!" said the merry old gentleman, "I knew you would do that. If you had done any differently there would have been no point to the fable."
And laying down both burdens by the roadside, he trudged away as merry as anything.