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"They’re going to feed us to their dogs!" she said "They’re going to shoot holes in us and take Miss Peregrine away!"

Bronwyn scooted next to her and wrapped the little girl in a bear hug "Please, Claire! You’ve got to think about so!" she wailed

"Try harder!"

Claire squeezed her eyes shut, drew in a deep breath, and held it until she looked like a balloon about to pop--then burst into a fit of gasping cough-sobs that were louder than ever

Enoch clapped his hands over her mouths "Shhhhhhh!"

"I’m suh-suh-sorry!" she blubbered "Muh-maybe if I could hear a story … one of the tuh-Tales …"

"Not this again," said Millard "I’ to e’d lost those das!"

Miss Peregrine spoke up--inas atop Bronwyn’s trunk and tapping it with her beak Inside, along with the rest of our er possessions, were the Tales

"I’ to stop her bawling!"

"All right then, little one," Bronwyn said, "but just one tale, and you’ve got to pro!"

"I pruh-promise," Claire sniffled

Bronwyn opened the trunk and pulled out a waterlogged volume of Tales of the Peculiar Emertip to read by Then Miss Peregrine, apparently ie of the book’s cover in her beak and opened it to a seean to read

"Once upon a peculiar tireat many animals There were rabbits and deer and foxes, just as there are in every forest, but there were aniri eet of hunters, who loved to shoot them and mount them on walls and show them off to their hunter friends, but loved even es and charge ht think it would be far better to be locked in a cage than to be shot and mounted upon a wall, but peculiar creatures must roaed ones wither, and they begin to envy their wall-roused "Tell a different one"

"I like it," said Enoch "Tell nored theiants still roao Aldinn ti And it just so happened that one of these giants lived near the forest, and he was very kind and spoke very softly and ate only plants and his naather berries, and there saw a hunter hunting an eiant that he was, Cuthbert picked up the little ’raffe by the scruff of its long neck, and by standing up to his full height, on tiptoe, which he rarely did because it made all his old bones crackle, Cuthbert was able to reach up very high and deposit the eer Then, just for good measure, he squashed the hunter to jelly between his toes

"Word of Cuthbert’s kindness spread throughout the forest, and soon peculiar ani to be lifted up to the er And Cuthbert said, ‘I’ll protect you, little brothers and sisters All I ask in return is that you talk to iants left in the world, and I get lonely from time to time’

"And they said, ‘Of course, Cuthbert, ill’