“But I don’t do it when I speak,” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh no; but then I am not you-oo-oo-oo,” said the woodpigeon.
Tommy Smith didn’t know how to answer this, so he thought he would change the subject. “What have you been doing this morning, Mr. Woodpigeon?” he said.
“Why, sitting here in the woo-oo-oo-oods and coo-oo-oo-ing,” the woodpigeon answered.
“Oh, but not all the morning, have you?” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh no,” said the woodpigeon. “From about six to nine I was having my breakfast in the fields.”
Tommy Smith thought that three hours was a very long time to take over one’s breakfast, and he said so. “I don’t take half an hour over mine,” he added.
“That is all very well,” said the woodpigeon; “but your breakfast is brought to you, whilst I have to find mine for myself. What you eat is put down before you on a table, but my table is the whole country, and it is so large and broad that it takes me a long while to find what is on it, and to eat as much of it as I want.”
“I wonder what your breakfast is like, Mr. Woodpigeon,” said Tommy Smith. “I suppose it is very different to mine.”