But Mr. Crow quickly silenced him.
“Do keep still!” he whispered. “Do you want to get me into trouble? It’s bad enough to have a trick like this played on me, without your making such a noise. 103 Farmer Green might shoot me if he saw me so near his house. I thought—” Mr. Crow added—“I thought you laughed a little too much when you told me about your four-armed man. It’s a hoax—a joke—a trick—and a very poor one, too.”
Jolly Robin was puzzled enough by Mr. Crow’s disagreeable remarks.
“I don’t understand how you can say those things,” he said.
Mr. Crow looked narrowly at his small companion before answering. And then he asked:
“Do you mean to say you never heard of a neck-yoke?”
“Never!” cried Jolly Robin.
“Well, well!” said Mr. Crow. “The ignorance of some people is more than I can understand.... That was no four-armed man. You said he looked like Farmer 104 Green’s hired-man; and it is not surprising that he does, for he is the hired-man. He has found an old neck-yoke somewhere. It is just a piece of wood that fits about his shoulders and around his neck and sticks out on each side of him like an arm. And he hooks a pail of milk to each end of the yoke, carrying his load in that way. I supposed,” said Mr. Crow, “that people had stopped using neck-yokes fifty years ago. It’s certainly that long since I’ve seen one.”
“Then it’s no wonder that I made a mistake!” Jolly Robin cried. “For I’m too young ever to have heard of a neck-yoke, even.” And he laughed and chuckled merrily. “It’s a good joke on me!” he said.
But old Mr. Crow did not laugh.