"Look here," he said to the old gentleman, "if I were you I shouldn't care to be a common general."
"What else can I be?" asked Mr. Crow with a hopeful gleam in his eye.
"You can be the cook," the Major suggested. "There are dozens of generals; but you'd be the only cook, you see."
Mr. Crow rather liked that idea.
"I accept your offer," he said somewhat stiffly. And then he marched down the line and took his place behind it.
Major Monkey breathed a sigh of relief. He was glad that the trouble had proved no worse. And now he turned once more to inspect the crowd of generals that was to make up his army.
"Here, you!" he said suddenly, pointing to a brownish gentleman at one end of the front rank. "What's your name?"
"Rusty Wren!" was the meek reply.
"Don't stick your tail up in the air like that!" Major Monkey cried. "You're spoiling the looks of the whole army."
Rusty Wren replied that it was very hard for him to keep his tail down for longer than a few moments at a stretch.