It was pretty to see! Afterwards he was for ever wanting to pull me about, and his mother noticed that that pleased me, for when I brought home anything good, an egg or a flower or a cake, she used to hold him up and place his little hands on my beard.
"Yes, in a few months the woman had learnt to hold him up high in her arms, for with care and quiet she had grown stronger.

White she always remained and delicate, but she grew younger and more beautiful from day to day; she can hardly have numbered twenty years when I bought her.
What she was called I never heard; nor did we give her any name.

She was 'the woman,' and so we called her.
"Eight moons passed by, and then the little Mouse died.

I wept as she did, and as I bent over the little corpse and let my tears have free course, and thought--now he can never lift up his pretty little finger to you again; then I felt for the first time the woman's soft hand on my cheek.

She stroked my rough beard as a child might, and with that looked at me so gratefully that I felt as though king Pharaoh had all at once made me a present of both Upper and Lower Egypt.
"When the Mouse was buried she got weaker again, but my mother took good care of her.