SET OUT FOR HOME BY A BACK WAY
"Well, that made Grandpaw Hare madder than ever. He didn't say another word, but just picked up his property that Mr. Tortoise handed him through the fence, and set out for home by a back way, studying what he ought to do to keep everybody from laughing at him, and thinking that if he didn't do something he'd have to leave the country or drown himself, for he had always been so proud that if people laughed at him he knew he could never show his face again.
"And that," said Mr. Rabbit, is the true story of that old race between the Hare and the Tortoise, and of how the first Rabbit came to lose his tail. I've never told it before, and none of my family ever did; but so many stories have been told about the way those things happened that we might just as well have this one, which is the only true one so far as I know.
Then Mr. Rabbit lit his pipe and leaned back and smoked. Mr. Dog said it was a fine story, and he wished he could have seen that race, and Mr. Turtle looked as if he wanted to say something, and did open his mouth to say it, but Mr. Crow spoke up, and asked what happened after that to Mr. Rabbit's twenty-seventh great-grandfather, and how it was that the rest of the Rabbits had short tails, too.
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 they were being snowed in without knowing it, for it was getting too dark to see much when they tried again to look out the window through the gloom of the Big Deep Woods.