No rat can gaze on this precious relic unmoved; few in fact ever have the chance to do so anyway, but my friend was among these few, and so he was able to describe the Tooth to me in complete detail.
“Now I must tell you,” Jensina went on, considerably cheered by having an audience, “that in spite of their cleverness the rats are really very careless. Their archives, as my friend admitted, are often kept in a terrible state; everything in disorder and they don’t even trouble about repairs. As one of their proverbs says, ‘Good is good enough.’ So it happened on the night of the great storm which you will remember, when the sky broke and all the water came tumbling down, the cellars of the Royal Treasure were completely flooded, and it fell to the lot of one rat, the janitor’s brother-in-law, who happened to be on guard, to rush down, snatch the box containing the relic, and bear it to a place of safety.
“Now, whether there was a hole in the box, which I can quite believe, knowing their extreme carelessness in such matters, or whether the guardian in his hurry carried if upside down, I don’t know. But on going for a walk first thing in the morning, to see what was washed out by the storm, the first thing I saw, shining on the path before me, was the famous Tooth of Grimalkin.
“On the moment’s impulse I picked it up and hid it under my frock, meaning to give it back to my friend at the first opportunity. But when you arrived I was so over-
