a thing only occurs once in a few years. You will let me go out again, won’t you?’
‘Top-off! Half-gone! They are such curious names; they set me thinking.’
‘You sit at home in your dark grey velvet coat,’ said the Cat, ‘getting your head full of fancies. It all comes of not going out in the daytime.’
During the Cat’s absence, the Mouse cleared up and made the house tidy; but the greedy Cat ate up all the fat. ‘When it ’s all gone, one can be at peace,’ said she to herself, as she went home, late at night, fat and satiated.
The Mouse immediately asked what name had been given to the third child.
‘I don’t suppose it will please you any better,’ said the Cat. ‘He is called All-gone!’
‘All-gone!’ exclaimed the Mouse. ‘I have never seen it in print. All-gone! What is the meaning of it?’
She shook her head, rolled herself up, and went to sleep.
From this time nobody asked the Cat to be sponsor. But when the winter came, and it grew very difficult to get food, the Mouse remembered their store, and said, ‘Come, Cat, we will go to our pot of fat which we have saved up; won’t it be good now?’
‘Yes, indeed!’ answered the Cat; ‘it will do you just as much good as putting your tongue out of the window.’
They started off to the church, and when they got there they found the fat-pot still in its place, but it was quite empty.
‘Alas,’ said the Mouse, ‘now I see it all. Everything has come to the light of day. You have indeed been a true friend! You ate it all up when you went to be godmother. First Top-off, then Half-gone, then‘
‘Hold your tongue,’ cried the Cat. ‘Another word, and I'll eat you too.’
But the unfortunate Mouse had ‘All-gone’ on its lips, and hardly had it come out than the Cat made a spring, seized the Mouse, and gobbled it up.
Now, that ’s the way of the world, you see.
