“Well, so am I! Boo!”
“Goodness me gracious sakes alive and some hooks and eyes!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “What does all this mean? Who’s afraid?” He peeked through the bushes and there he saw, on the woodland path, a lot of men with needles, pins, spools of thread, tape measures, yardsticks, thimbles, scissors, linings, pockets, buttonholes and all things like that.
“Who are you?” asked Uncle Wiggily, in surprise.
“I’ll tell you who we are,” answered one of the twenty-four, (for there were just two dozen of them) as the rabbit gentleman could count. Then some one sang this song:
“We four-and-twenty tailors went to catch a snail,
The best man among us dared not touch her tail;
She put out her horns like a little Kylow cow,
So run, tailors! Run! Or she’ll bite us all just now!”
And as the tailor said that he turned and ran through the woods as fast as ever he could run, all the other twenty-three running after him.
“Oh, my! Oh, me! Oh, dear! This is too funny!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Four-and-twenty tailors afraid of a snail, even if she did put out her horns like a Kylow cow. I say, tailors! Come back! Come back!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Mother Goose is worried about you. Come back!”