At this point Mr. Rabbit ceased speaking abruptly, moving his ears to and fro nervously as if he had heard something disagreeable, and common courtesy demanded that the silence should not be broken save by himself.
CHAPTER XIV
MR. CROW'S PLOT
While one might have counted twenty Mr. Rabbit remained in a listening attitude, and then, shaking his ears with a gesture which was very like that of mental relief, said with a smile as he stroked his whiskers swaggeringly:
"Do you know, just for a minute I thought the smell of young Mr. Fox was in the air. When I got rid of that fellow's grandfather I said to Mrs. Bunny that a full half of all our troubles had disappeared out of the big woods, with the evidence of the good fortune nailed up on Mr. Man's barn; but I had entirely forgotten that the old rascal left behind him a regular gang of children and grandchildren, and I truly believe they are the worst to be found anywhere in this world, to say nothing of their being able to run twice as fast as their grandfather ever could even in his best days.
"I wonder why it is that the Fox family have such a hankering for rabbit pie, stew, or even plain rabbit? Of course, they don't turn up their noses at a good plump partridge, and they know how to catch him, too, when the snow is deep; but I verily believe there's nothing goes quite so near the right spot in a fox's stomach as rabbit meat. Mr. Crow says that years and years ago, when the mountains were only grown into little hills, Clote Scarpe, the Great Spirit who made all the birds and animals, used to walk around listening to any complaint his creatures might make. I wish he would come around the big woods now! You can set it down as a fact that I'd beg him to fix it so that the first taste of rabbit would make a fox so sick that he'd come pretty near turning himself inside out, and then there'd be a little peace for my family.
"No; it's as you say, Clote Scarpe doesn't pay very much attention to us wood folks now, and it wouldn't surprise me a little bit if it were all one of Mr. Crow's yarns—I mean about the Great Spirit's listening to our troubles, for if anything like that ever had happened, it seems as if some of my people would have fixed it for us long ago. Yet, if you'd listen to Mr. Turtle, he'd tell you that years and years ago, before even the rocks had grown, one of his greatest, greatest grandfathers, who didn't have any hard shell on his back, went to Clote Scarpe and had himself fixed so that none of the animals could bite him, and that's the reason why he's got a house to live in this day that even Jimmy Hedgehog can't harm.
"Don't be afraid that I won't finish my story I began a while ago. Speaking of the Fox family brought my mind to what Mrs. Bunny and I have talked over many and many a time, and I couldn't seem to help telling you about it. Now I'll go on about the fix I found myself in when I was going up to the club to tell the president that I'd have to give over being a member because it was making so much trouble for me at home. And do you know, that very scrape with young Mr. Fox was what broke up our meetings at Crow's Corner? It's a fact, though perhaps the same thing might have happened in some other way.