“But I think it had a very good moral,” remarked Mrs. Meadows.

 

“What was it?” inquired Mr. Rabbit with great solemnity.

 

“Why, if the little girl had been too stingy to give the old beggar a piece of her cake, she would never have come to be Princess,” replied Mrs. Meadows.

 

“Did she give the beggar a piece of cake?” asked Mr. Rabbit.

 

“Why, certainly she did,” Mr. Thimblefinger answered.

 

“Well,” remarked Mr. Rabbit, setting himself back in his chair, “I must have been fast asleep when she did it. But the place for a moral, as I’ve been told, is right at the end of a story, and not at the beginning.”

 

“Can’t you tell us a story with a moral?” suggested Mrs. Meadows.

 

“I can,” replied Mr. Rabbit. “I can for a fact, and the piece of cake you mentioned puts me in mind of it.”

 

Mr. Rabbit closed his eyes and rubbed his nose, and then began:—

 

“Once upon a time, when Brother Fox and myself were living on pretty good terms with each other, we received an invitation to attend a barbecue that Brother Wolf was going to give on the following Saturday. The next day we received an invitation to a barbecue that Brother Bear was going to give on the same Saturday.

 

“I made up my mind at once to go to Brother Bear’s barbecue, because I knew he would have fresh roasting ears, and if there’s anything I like better than another, it is fresh roasting ears. I asked Brother Fox whether he was going to Brother Bear’s barbecue or to Brother Wolf’s, but he shook his head. He said he hadn’t made up his mind. I just asked him out of idle curiosity, for I didn’t care whether he went or whether he stayed.

 

“I went about my work as usual. Cold weather was coming on, and I wanted to get my crops in before the big freeze came. But I noticed that Brother Fox was mighty² restless in his mind. He didn’t do a stroke of work. He’d sit down and then he’d get up; he’d stand still and look up in the tops of the trees, and then he’d walk back and

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