"How could you expect me to slip through any of those places?" he asked.
"Why—" said the tailor—"I thought it would be easy for you. I've always heard you were a very slippery customer."
When he said that, Mr. Crow made some queer noises in his throat, much as if he were choking.
"Are you ill?" the tailor cried.
"Just a frog in my throat!" Mr. Crow answered.
As he said that. Mr. Frog leaped toward the door. He was a jumpy sort of person. When anything startled him you could never tell in what direction he might spring. And he was now about to rush out of his shop when Mr. Crow caught him and dragged him back.
"You can't go," he shouted, "until you've taken the stitches out of the back of my coat."
"Oh, certainly!" Mr. Frog quavered. And he set to work at once to open the back seam of Mr. Crow's coat.
He was a spry worker—was Mr. Frog. In less time than it takes to tell it he had ripped the back of the coat from collar to hem.
And old Mr. Crow was no less spry in pulling the coat off and flinging it into a corner.