“Let’s go further into the woods,” he said. “I know a fine place, where we won’t be disturbed.” He had noticed that old Mr. Crow was sitting in the top of a tall elm, and he did not care to have the old gentleman see what was going on.
So they followed Mr. Fox. And after a while he stopped close by a broad brook. He told Billy and his brothers just where to stand, and how to hold their short sticks so they would look like fifes.
The Grouse boys perched themselves high up on the trunk of a dead tree, which had fallen against a big oak and lay slanting between the oak and the ground.
“Come right down here!” Mr. Fox said to them.
But the Grouse brothers told him that they could drum much better where they were.
“What tune are we going to learn?” Billy Woodchuck asked.
Mr. Fox thought for a moment. And then he said:
“The first tune will be ‘Pop! Goes the Weasel.’” He hummed it to them. And soon the Grouse boys began to drum; and Billy Woodchuck and his brothers began to whistle.
Though they played very badly, Mr. Fox declared again and again that he was much pleased.
“But I seem to be a little too near the music,” he said. “I want you all to face that way,” he went on, pointing a paw over his shoulder. “And please keep on playing while I go off and see how the tune sounds further away.”