And then the owl told all about the grand meeting that the animals had held in the woods, and all that they had said to each other, and what they had decided to do to try and make Tommy Smith a better boy to animals, and how, at first, they had wanted to hurt him (or even to kill him), because they were so angry with him, until the owl had persuaded them not to. It was all the wise owl’s doing. He knew that the best way to make a little boy kind to animals was to teach him something about them; and who could teach him so well as the animals themselves?
CHAPTER XII.
THE LEAVE-TAKING
“All ‘Tommy Smith’s Animals’ take leave with joy,
For they know Tommy Smith is a different boy.”
WHEN Tommy Smith had gone to sleep, the owl flew away, and he flew to the same place where he had met the other animals before, and found them all there again waiting for him (of course, it had been arranged). Then all the animals began to tell each other about the conversations they had had with Tommy Smith, and what a very much better boy he had become. They were all so glad; and, of course, they all thanked the owl, because it had been his idea.
Then the owl thanked all the animals for thanking him, and he said that it was his idea, but that it might just as well have been the idea of any other animal there, and he wished that it had been, because, then, he could have called it clever, but now, of course, he couldn’t, for that would be praising himself,—which would never do. You see, he wanted to be modest. One ought always to be modest when one makes a speech. And now (the owl said) he was quite sure that Tommy Smith would never be unkind to animals any more as long as he lived, because, just before he flew away, he had asked him to promise that he wouldn’t. But Tommy Smith had just gone off to sleep then, and so he had had to promise it in his sleep. “And, you know,” said the owl, “that when a promise is made in that way, it is always kept.” Then all the animals clapped their—well, whatever they could clap, and said “Hurrah!” and the meeting broke up.
And the owl was right. As Tommy Smith grew older, and became a big boy, he found that animals did not talk to him any more in the way they used to do. It seemed as if they only cared to talk to little boys or girls. But there was one way of having conversations with them, which he got to like better and better, and that was to go out into the woods and fields and watch what they were doing. He soon found that that was quite as interesting as really talking to them. In fact, it was talking to them in another kind of way, for they kept telling him all about themselves, only without speaking. And the more Tommy Smith learnt about them, the more he liked them, until the animals became his very best friends. Of course, one is never unkind to one’s very best friends, and, besides, Tommy Smith had given the owl a promise—in his sleep.
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