The first thing that it saw in the park was
Bertha; her pinafore was so spotlessly white and clean that it could be
seen from a great distance. Bertha saw the wolf and saw that it was
stealing towards her, and she began to wish that she had never been
allowed to come into the park. She ran as hard as she could, and the
wolf came after her with huge leaps and bounds. She managed to reach a
shrubbery of myrtle bushes and she hid herself in one of the thickest of
the bushes. The wolf came sniffing among the branches, its black tongue
lolling out of its mouth and its pale grey eyes glaring with rage. Bertha
was terribly frightened, and thought to herself: 'If I had not been so
extraordinarily good I should have been safe in the town at this moment.'
However, the scent of the myrtle was so strong that the wolf could not
sniff out where Bertha was hiding, and the bushes were so thick that he
might have hunted about in them for a long time without catching sight of
her, so he thought he might as well go off and catch a little pig
instead. Bertha was trembling very much at having the wolf prowling and
sniffing so near her, and as she trembled the medal for obedience clinked
against the medals for good conduct and punctuality. The wolf was just
moving away when he heard the sound of the medals clinking and stopped to
listen; they clinked again in a bush quite near him. He dashed into the
bush, his pale grey eyes gleaming with ferocity and triumph, and dragged
Bertha out and devoured her to the last morsel.
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