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‘That was rather clumsy of you,’ said he, standing up naked in his flesh. ‘Surely you could have split the rock without tearing my coat to bits!’ And he stooped down to pick up the pieces. It took him a long time, for there were a great many of them, but at last he had them all in his hand.

‘I’ll go to my sister the frog,’ he thought to himself, ‘and she will sew them together for me’; and he set off at once for the swamp in which his sister lived.

‘Will you sew my coat together? I had an unlucky accident, and it is quite impossible to wear,’ he said, when he found her.

‘With pleasure,’ she answered, for she had always been taught to be polite; and getting her needle and thread she began to fit the pieces. But though she was very good-natured, she was not very clever, and she got some of the bits wrong. When the wolverine, who was very particular about his clothes, came to put it on, he grew very angry.

‘What a useless creature you are!’ cried he. ‘Do you expect me to go about in such a coat as that? Why it bulges all down the back, as if I had a hump, and it is so tight across the chest that I expect it to burst every time I breathe. I knew you were stupid, but I did not think you were as stupid as that.’ And giving the poor frog a blow on her head, which knocked her straight into the water, he walked off in a rage to his younger sister the mouse.

‘I tore my coat this morning,’ he began, when he had found her sitting at the door of her house eating an apple. ‘It was all in little bits, and I took it to our sister the frog to ask her to sew it for me. But just look at the way she has done it! You will have to take it to pieces and fit them together properly, and I hope I shall not have to complain again.’ For as the wolverine was older than the mouse, he was accustomed to speak to her in this manner. However, the mouse was used to it and only answered: ‘I think you had better stay here till it is done, and if there is any alteration needed I can make it.’ So the wolverine sat down on a heap of dry ferns, and picking up the apple, he finished it without even asking the mouse’s leave.

At last the coat was ready, and the wolverine put it on.

‘Yes, it fits very well,’ said he, ‘and you have sewn it very neatly. When I pass this way again I will bring you a handful of corn, as a reward’; and he ran off as smart as ever, leaving the mouse quite grateful behind him.

He wandered about for many days, till he reached a place where food was very scarce, and for a whole week he went without any. He was growing desperate, when he suddenly came upon a bear that was lying asleep. ‘Ah! here is food at last!’ thought he; but how was he to kill the bear, who was so much bigger than himself? It was no use to try force, he must invent some cunning plan which would get her into his power. At last, after thinking hard, he decided upon something, and going up to the bear, he exclaimed: ‘Is that you, my sister?’

The bear turned round and saw the wolverine, and murmuring to herself, so low that nobody could hear, ‘I never heard before that I had a brother,’ got up and ran quickly to a tree, up which she climbed. Now the wolverine was very angry when he saw his dinner vanishing in front of him, especially as HE could not climb trees like the bear, so he followed, and stood at the foot of the tree, shrieking as loud as he could, ‘Come down, sister; our father has sent me to look for you! You were lost when you were a little girl and went out picking berries, and it was only the other day that we heard from a beaver where you were.’ At these words, the bear came a little way down the tree, and the wolverine, seeing this, went on: