The two rats waited a little while. Then they too stood up, shook themselves, and resumed their steady trot.
“This is very mysterious,” said Poor Cecco to Bulka, “and I begin to think that Jensina knows rather more about it than she is willing to tell us!”
Seeing, however, that the rats made no effort to overtake them, but just trotted steadily along in the rear, he began to take courage.
“After all,” he said, “we are three and they are only two. Let us put a good face on the matter, and before nightfall we may yet manage to give them the slip.”
So they kept on their way, chatting together, and affecting to pay no attention to the rats, who followed at a little distance behind them—pad—pad—twitching their whiskers and looking neither to right nor left.
At noon they sat down to rest in the shade of a lofty burdock, making a meal off some wild strawberries which Jensina discovered by the roadside. Not far from them the two rats also waited, panting, and not ill-pleased at the opportunity to rest once more and mop their foreheads. They, however, having no strawberries, could only sit and suck their paws.
“They will soon get tired of this,” Poor Cecco said.
But the rats showed no sign of giving up the chase. All that afternoon they followed on their track, and when twilight fell, and Jensina glanced over her shoulder, it
