“I declare it isn’t right!” he exclaimed after a while. “I don’t mind telling about other folks, but when it comes to talking about myself, it is a different thing.”

 

“Don’t you remember the time you tried to get Brother Terrapin¹ to give you a fiddle²-string?” asked Mrs. Meadows, laughing a little.

 

“Oh, that was just a joke,” replied Mr. Rabbit.

 

“Call it a joke, then,” said Mrs. Meadows. “You know what the little boy said when the man asked him his name. He said, says he, ‘You may call it anything, so you call me to dinner.’”

 

“He wasn’t very polite,” remarked Sweetest Susan.

 

[Pg 102] “No, indeed,” Mrs. Meadows answered; “but you know that little boys can’t always remember to be polite.”

 

“I think we were at your house,” suggested Mr. Rabbit, rubbing his chin.

 

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Meadows. “In the little house by the creek³. The yard sloped from the front door right to the bank.”

 

“To be sure,” exclaimed Mr. Rabbit, brightening up. “I remember the house just as well as if I had seen it yesterday. There was a little shelf on the left-hand side of the door as you came out, and there the water-bucket sat.”

 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Meadows; “and there was just room enough up there by the bucket for Brother Terrapin.”

 

“That’s so,” Mr. Rabbit replied, laughing, “and when he used to go to your house to see the girls they’d set the bucket on the table in the house and lift Brother Terrapin to the shelf so he could see and be seen. I remember it used to make him very mad when I’d tell him he would be a mighty⁴ man if he wasn’t so flat-footed.”

 

“Oh, you used to talk worse than that,” cried Mrs. Meadows, laughing

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