“Let me see!” he said at last. “What’s the thing you do best?”
Jolly Robin replied at once that he thought he could fly better than he could do anything else. And he felt so happy, because he was sure Jimmy Rabbit was 18 going to help him, that he began to laugh gaily. And he couldn’t help singing a snatch of a new song he had heard that morning. And then he laughed again.
“You’re mistaken,” Jimmy Rabbit said to him. “You fly well enough, I dare say. But there are others who can beat you at flying.... No!” he declared. “What you can do better than anybody I know is to laugh. And if I were you I should make laughing my regular business.”
That idea struck Jolly Robin as being so funny that he laughed harder than ever. And Jimmy Rabbit nodded his head again, as if to say, “I’m right and I know it!”
At last Jolly Robin stopped laughing long enough to ask Jimmy to explain how anyone could make a business of laughing. “I don’t see how it could be done,” said Jolly Robin. 19
“Why—it’s simple enough!” Jimmy told him. “All you need do is to find somebody who will hire you to laugh for him. There are people, you know, who find it very difficult to laugh. I should think they’d be glad to pay somebody to do their laughing for them.”
“Name someone!” Jolly Robin urged him.
And Jimmy Rabbit did.
“There’s old Mr. Crow!” he said. “You know how solemn he is. It’s positively painful to hear him try to laugh at a joke. I’m sure he would be delighted with this idea. And if I were you I’d see him before somebody else does.”
Jolly Robin looked puzzled.