“All right,” agreed Chatter cheerfully. “But how about Man?”
“Man?” shouted Nibble and the mice and the partridge all together. For this was news! When the Woodsfolk see a man they don’t stop to look at him; they run and hide. And Nibble had never even got a glimpse of one yet. Neither had the bats. But the sleepy bat just kept on insisting, “He’s neither Fish, Bird, nor Beast, if he hasn’t a tail.”
“Then what is he?” demanded Chatter. He thought he had asked something the bat couldn’t answer.
“What does he wear?” said the bat.
And now it was Chatter who didn’t know what to say. For a Man doesn’t wear scales or feathers or fur. “I think he wears a skin—like a frog,” he said at last.
“I told you so!” And the bat nodded away more conceitedly than ever. And nothing the others could say made any difference.
“But he’s not green,” objected Chatter. “And he doesn’t hop. He’s ever so much bigger, and he’s tan, like your vest, Nibble, or pink, like the inside of your mouth.” Chatter had seen the little boys at the swimming-hole and some of them must have been sunburned.
“Now isn’t that queer,” remarked a partridge. “The one we saw seemed all brown and wrinkly and shelly, like Grandpop Snappingturtle. And he made a noise like a Summer Storm.” She meant a man in a shooting-coat who fired a gun.
“Nothing queer about,” announced Gimlet cheerfully. Gimlet knows more than all the rest of them because he works for the man in the Orchard and is on very good terms with the whole Man tribe. “They come in as many shapes and sizes and colours as flowers.” You see Gimlet doesn’t know the difference between men and women and children. “They make as many different noises as all of us put together and do as many different things.”
“I’m going to take a good long look at the first man I see,” said Nibble. “I will, if I know him when I see him. That’s the only way I’ll ever understand what you’ve been talking about.”