LITTLE MR. THIMBLEFINGER
“I remember the time, too, when he had a singing-match with Brother Crow, and I nearly laughed myself to death over it.”
“Oh, tell us about it,” cried Buster John.
“There’s nothing in it when it is told,” replied Mr. Rabbit. “There are some things that are funny when you see them, but not funny at all when you come to tell about them.”
“We don’t mind that,” said Sweetest Susan.
“I don’t know exactly how it came about,” resumed Mr. Rabbit, after a pause, “but as near as I can remember, Brother Buzzard and Brother Crow met with each other early one morning in a big pine-tree. They howdied, but there was a sort of coolness between them on account of the fact that Brother Buzzard had been going about the neighborhood making his brags and his boasts that he could outfly Brother Crow. They hadn’t been up in the tree very long before they began to dispute. Brother Buzzard was not a very loud talker in those days, whatever he may be now, but Brother Crow could squall louder than a woman who has been married twenty-two years. And so there they had it, quarreling and disputing and disturbing the peace.”
“What were they quarreling about?” Buster John inquired.
“Well,” replied Mr. Rabbit, “you know the road that leads to Brag is the shortest route to Bluster. Brother Buzzard and Brother Crow were quarreling because they had been bragging, and a little more and they’d have had a regular pitched battle then and there.
“‘Maybe you can outfly me, Brother Buzzard,’ says Mr. Crow, ‘but I’ll be bound you can’t outsing me.’