Join us for a weekly blog party in Six Sentence Stories, hosted by Denise and attended by some mighty fine, fun folk. Prompt word=HOLD. Read, write and come back for more SIX SENTENCE STORIES.

Meanwhile, Maigret and the little ones seize the opportunity offered by a confusing switch to alliance between feline Sylvia and daring mouse Jack, and the flickering arrival and resizing of Wynken, Blynkin, and Nod, as well as the rolling arrival of the wheel of cheese just outside their mousehole; they had to help their father to fetch the family feast, and so began to gnaw at the rind and tear out tiny sections for their dinner.

“Hold on, just a minute,” Dame Lorelai intones as she scoops up the three boys and their wooden shoe with one hand, and deftly throws a slipper at Jack and Sylvia with the other.

“Creamed herring before bed is sure to bring on nightmares worse than this,” So saying, she grabs a biscuit for each boy, settles them back into the shoe, wraps them tightly in the tiny boat’s sail, placing them on the flat of her palm and flicking them smartly with her finger, back home to bed in a sparkling shower of magic.

“Sylvia, I’m pleased that you take your job seriously, but Jack and his family are still part of the household, so we don’t kill them,” she sighs and continues, “and Jack, you know you have only to ask, so why steal cheese in the middle of the night?”

“Because this is a Jack tale…and it’s more of a challenge and much more fun when trickery is involved,” he raises his voice to be heard above the several-sound of tiny teeth gnawing on cheese rind, “and besides, the mouselings have got to learn a trade somehow, right?”

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2026)

(not QUITE the end!)