“Then why was it that you begged me not to make you drink it?”
“We boys are always that way. We have more fear of the medicine than of the sickness.”
“Shame on you! Boys ought to know that a good medicine taken in time may save them from serious trouble and perhaps from death.”
“Oh! another time I will not behave so badly. I will remember the black Rabbits with the coffin on their shoulders and then I will take the medicine quickly.”
“Now come here and tell me how it happened that you fell into the hands of assassins.”
“Well, it happened in this way. The manager of the marionettes, Fire Eater, gave me five pieces of gold and said to me, ‘Take these to your poor papa.’ I met on the road a Fox and a Cat, two very nice persons, who said to me: ‘Do you wish those pieces to become two thousand? Come with us and we will take you to the Field of Miracles.’ I said, ‘Let us go’; and they said, ‘Let us stop at the Red Lobster Inn, and after midnight we will continue our journey.’ When I awoke I found that they had gone. I then began to walk alone in the dark and I met two coal sacks with assassins inside who said to me, ‘Give us your money.’ I said, ‘I have none’; I hid the gold pieces in my mouth.
