"May I get you a finger bowl?" Dickie inquired.
Fatty Coon actually didn't know what he meant.
"Is that something to eat?" he asked. And he looked much interested, and seemed quite downcast when Dickie said "No!"
"Then you needn't trouble yourself," Fatty Coon told him with a sigh.
"Can't you find corn enough for a good meal?" Dickie asked him wonderingly.
"I could," said Fatty Coon, "if other people didn't take so much of it.... Now, there's Mr. Crow," he complained. "I had to get out of bed and come over here to-day, in the sunlight, because I was afraid he wouldn't leave any corn for me.
"There's no use saying anything to him," Fatty continued, "because he thinks this is his cornfield.... But little chaps like you will have to keep away from this place.... Now I've warned you," he added. "And if I hear of your eating any more corn I'll come straight to your house—when I find out where it is—and I'll——"
He did not finish his threat. But he looked so darkly at Dickie that what he didn't say made Dickie Deer Mouse shiver all over, though the warm midday sun fell upon the cornfield.
Now, Dickie Deer Mouse hadn't eaten a single kernel of corn all that day. But he suddenly lost his appetite for it; and murmuring a faint good-bye he turned and ran for the woods as fast as he could go.
"Stop! Stop!" Fatty Coon called after him. "There's something more I want to say to you."