"I'm sorry——" Fatty told him—"I'm sorry that I ever touched the old—I mean the young—lady's eggs. And now that[p. 17] you've almost bitten my paw in two, please—good Mr. Turtle—let me go!"
But good Mr. Turtle had no notion of freeing his prisoner.
"Not yet!" he snapped. "I'm going to bite you twenty-seven times as long, and twenty-seven times as hard—if I can."
"But it was only a mistake!" Fatty Coon moaned. "I never knew you wanted those eggs yourself."
"Take care——" said Timothy Turtle sternly—"take care that you never make such a mistake again."
"Don't do that!" Fatty Coon suddenly cried.
"Don't do what?" was Mr. Turtle's testy reply.
"Don't pull on my leg!" Fatty Coon pleaded. "You'll have me in the water in another moment, and I'll get wet, and my mother won't like it a bit."[p. 18]
But Timothy Turtle paid no heed to Fatty Coon's objections.
"Certainly I'll pull you into the creek," he declared. "I'm going to take you out where the water's deep, and drag you down, down, down to the very bottom. We'll have lots of fun burying ourselves in the mud. And I venture to say that you'll like it so well down there that you'll never want to come up again."