It must also be related how a few days afterward, when Little Redcap was again taking cakes to her grandmother, another wolf spoke to her, and wanted to tempt her to leave the path; but she was on her guard, and went straight on her way, and told her grandmother how that the wolf had met her and wished her good-day, but had looked so wicked about the eyes that she thought if it had not been on the high road he would have devoured her.

“Come,” said the grandmother, “we will shut the door, so that he may not get in.”

Soon after came the wolf knocking at the door, and calling out, “Open the door, grandmother, I am Little Redcap, bringing you cakes.”  But they remained still and did not open the door.  After that the wolf slunk by the house, and got at last upon the roof to wait until Little Redcap should return home in the evening; then he meant to spring down upon her and devour her in the darkness.  But the grandmother discovered his plot.  Now, there stood before the house a great stone trough, and the grandmother said to the child:  “Little Redcap, I was boiling sausages yesterday, so take the bucket and carry away the water they were boiled in and pour it into the trough.”

And Little Redcap did so until the great trough was quite full.  When the smell of the sausages reached the nose of the wolf he snuffed it up and looked around, and stretched out his neck so far that he lost his balance and began to slip, and he slipped down off the roof straight in the great trough and was drowned.  Then Little Redcap went cheerfully home and came to no harm.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 3:  Every boy and girl should read this pretty fairy story.]

New Zealand Children.

New Zealand children are pretty, dark-eyed, smooth-cheeked little creatures, with clear skins of burnt umber color, and the reddest mouths in the world, until the girl grows up and her mother tattooes her lips blue, for gentility’s sake.

All day they live in the open air, unless during a violent storm.  But they are perfectly healthy and very clean, for the first thing they do is to plunge into the sea water.  Besides this, they take baths in warm springs that abound everywhere, and which keep their skins in good order.  As to their breakfast, I am afraid that often they have some very unpleasant things to eat—­stale shark, for instance, and sour corn bread—­so sour that you could not swallow it, and boiled fern root, or the pulp of fern stems, or crawfish.

Even if their father had happened to cut down a tall palm the day before, in order to take what white people call the “palm cabbage” out of it’s very top, I’m afraid he would not share this dainty with the children.  I am not sure he would offer even their mother a bite.  It would be literally a bite if he did, for when people get together to eat in New Zealand, one takes a piece of something from the basket in which food is served, bites out a mouthful and hands it to the next, who does the same, and passes it to his neighbor, and so on until it is all gone, and some other morsel is begun upon.