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Puss in Boots, Jr., and the Good Gray Horse

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<hr style="width: 65%;" />[109] <h2>LITTLE BOY BLUE</h2> <div class='cap'>YOU remember in the last story that Puss and his Good Gray Horse had camped in a grove of trees for the night. Well, just as Puss was about to curl up and take a little trip to dreamland he heard a voice singing:</div> <div class='poem'> "Little Boy Blue, Come, leave your toys. It's time to wash hands For little boys. "Supper is ready, You must not wait. Tuck in your napkin And don't tip your plate. "Oh, where is Boy Blue? Let's all take a peep. He's there on the sofa, Fast asleep." </div> Puss opened his eyes and saw a little light twinkling through the trees. So he got up and went toward it to find that it shone from the window of a small cottage. As he knocked on the door he thought, "I may be asked to spend the night, and that will be much more comfortable than lying beneath the trees." And it turned out[110] just as he thought. The pretty woman who opened the door asked him in, saying, softly: "Tiptoe in, my dear Puss, Junior, for Boy Blue has just gone to sleep." And you know how softly a cat can tiptoe! But of course he first slipped off his red-topped boots with their clanking spurs. Then Boy Blue's mother gave Puss, Junior, some milk and cake, and after that he put his Good Gray Horse in the stable and came back to sit down by the fire. Over the mantelpiece hung a silver horn, and as Puss looked up at it he remembered long ago in Old Mother Goose Land a little Boy Blue who blew his horn to call the cows from the fields of corn. "Does your little Boy Blue go to sleep in a haystack?" "No, my dear," laughingly replied his mother, "but his father did. And that's the horn he used to blow in the early morn to call the cows and the woolly sheep when under the haystack he'd fallen asleep." "I met him once, a long time ago," said little Puss, Junior. "I remember the place quite well. He carried me on his shoulder over to see little Miss Muffet who sat on a tuffet, and she gave us some curds and whey till a horrid old spider sat down beside us and frightened her away."[111] "And so you were the little cat who was with him, were you?" said little Boy Blue's mother. But Puss didn't answer, for he had fallen fast asleep and was dreaming that he was once more with his dear father, the famous Puss in Boots. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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