Then Mr. Rabbit said that that was another story, and Mr. Squirrel and Mr. Robin wanted him to tell it right away, but Mr. Crow said they'd better have supper now, and Mr. 'Possum thought that was a good plan, and Mr. 'Coon, too, and then they all hurried around to get up some sticks of wood from down stairs, and to set the table, and everybody helped, so they could get through early and have a nice long evening.
And all the time the snow was coming down outside and piling higher and higher, and it was getting too dark to see much when they tried to look out the window through the gloom of the Big Deep Woods.
HOW THE OTHER RABBITS
LOST THEIR TAILS
MR. JACK RABBIT CONTINUES HIS FAMILY HISTORY
"DID they have enough left for supper—enough for all the visitors, I mean?" asks the Little Lady the next evening, when the Story Teller is ready to go on with the history of the Hollow Tree.
Oh, yes, they had plenty for supper, and more, too. They had been getting ready a good while for just such a time as this, and had carried in a lot of food, and they had a good many nice things down in the store room where the wood was, but they didn't need those yet. They just put on what they had left from their big dinner, and Mr. Crow stirred up a pan of hot biscuits by his best receipt, and they passed them back and forth across the table so much that Mr. 'Possum said they went like hot cakes, sure enough, and always took two when they came his way.
And they talked a good deal about the stories that Mr. 'Coon and Mr. Rabbit had told them, and everybody thought how sly and smart Mr. 'Coon had been to fool Mr. Dog that way; and Mr. 'Coon said that, now he came to think it over, he supposed it was a pretty good trick, though it really hadn't seemed so specially great to him at the time. He said he didn't think it half as smart as Mr. Tortoise's trick on Mr. Rabbit's Grandpaw Hare, when he beat him in the foot race and went over the fence first, taking Mr. Hare's tail with him. And then they wondered if that had all really happened as Mr. Rabbit had told it—all but Mr. Turtle, who just sat and smiled to himself and didn't say anything at all, except "Please pass the biscuits," now and then, when he saw the plate being set down in front of Mr. 'Possum.
Then by and by they all got through and hurried up and cleared off the table, and lit their pipes, and went back to the fire, and pretty soon Jack Rabbit began to tell