The Newcomes [antikvár]

THE NEWCOMES. -¦¦ CHAPTER I. the overture—after which the curtain rises upon a drinking chorus. A CROW, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy window, sate perched on a tree, looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him. The frog's hideous large eyes were goggling out of his head in a manner which appeared quite ridiculous to the old blackamoor, who watched the splay-footed slimy wretch with that peculiar grim humour belonging to crows. Not far from the frog a fat ox was browsing; whilst a few lambs frisked about the meadow, or nibbled the grass and buttercups there. Who should come into the farther end of the field but a wolf? He was so cunningly dressed up in sheep's clothing, that the very lambs did not know master wolf; nay, one of them, whose dam the wolf had just eaten, after which he had thrown her skin over his shoulders, ran up innocently towards the devouring monster, mistaking him for her mamma. " He, he!" says a fox, sneaking round the hedge-paling, over which the tree grew whereupon the crow was perched, looking down on the frog, who was staring with his goggle eyes fit to burst with envy, and croaking abuse at the ox. i " How absurd those lambs are ! Yonder silly little knock-kneed baahling does not know the old wolf dressed in the