Page 106 - Nuts to You - The Nutcracker Retold

“First, share the cheese. Second, don’t offer half-gnawed cookies. Third, scratch her back on the spot she can’t reach – just like you do for Mummy. Fourth, don’t laugh at her tiny little teeth, and be sure to smile and show how beautifully long and yellow your teeth are. Fifth, lick her behind her ears – she’ll love that. Sixth, never offer treats with your paws down – always extend the treat on the tip of your longest and sharpest nail. And finally, when the time has come to propose, be sure to bite her on the back of her neck. That, my dear, is guaranteed to make any miss swoon at your feet. But let me caution you – use it only when you’ve finally got her alone. The parents might object.”
This, actually, struck Reggie as extremely funny and, in spite of himself, he laughed – and then wished he’d swallowed a bucket of nails instead.
“Just what do you find so funny?” the Mouse Queen grated out.
It seemed he couldn’t stop. The thought of himself, a mouse, courting the young lady of the house – and of a mouse giving a girl cheese and treating her to cookies – was funny. And Reggie blurted out, “Do you really think she’ll fall for a rat?” (Reggie always thought of himself in the grander form of rodenthood and never as a diminutive mouse.)
The Mouse Queen looked down on Reggie and realized that even a MOUSE wouldn’t fall for him; he was such a runty, ratty, stupid little thing. With a sigh, and an intense longing to be done with all this and return to the table of goodies waiting for her back in the Land of Sweets, she considered the sad fact that her son was a loser in the looks department. But, she thought, he was a mean-spirited, slimy, backbiting son – and was sure to go places. In a lot
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