"Why, you insolent marsupial!" retorted the bear in a rage; "you expect my oil to give you hair upon your tail, when it will not give me even a tail. Why don't you try under-draining, or top-dressing with light compost?"
They said and did a good deal more before the opossum withdrew his cold and barren member from consideration; but the judicious fabulist does not encumber his tale with extraneous matter, lest it be pointless.
CXXII.
"So disreputable a lot as you are I never saw!" said a sleepy rat to the casks in a wine-cellar. "Always making night hideous with your hoops and hollows, and disfiguring the day with your bunged-up appearance. There is no sleeping when once the wine has got into your heads. I'll report you to the butler!"
"The sneaking tale-bearer," said the casks. "Let us beat him with our staves."
"Requiescat in pace," muttered a learned cobweb, sententiously.
"Requires a cat in the place, does it?" shrieked the rat. "Then I'm off!"
To explain all the wisdom imparted by this fable would require the pen of a pig, and volumes of smoke.