And the White Cow was answering, “Oh, I’ve been waiting quite a while to drive a bit of sense into the wild little thing.” And she settled down to switching her tail and chewing her cud as calmly as ever.
But that made Nibble indignant. “She’s not a Wild Thing,” he said. “Wild Things have better manners than any of you or they’d be fighting all the time. I’m a Wild Thing myself, so I know.”
“Oh, it’s the Bunny,” drawled the White Cow, dragging her words the way she drags her toes, because she thinks as slowly as she walks. “Well, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You’re perfectly right. Manners are to keep folks from fighting—to make them think before they pick a quarrel. That Red Cow just wouldn’t think until we made her. Now she’ll learn.”
“’Nother thing,” Nibble insisted, “we don’t help any one against our own kind.”
“That sort of talk is less use than a trampled cornstalk,” Mother Snowflake lowed sensibly. “All the kind we have here is Tommy Peele. His people take care of us, so we take care of him.”
“Yes,” Watch put in; “you saw how he trusted us.” And he waved his tail quite grandly.
“But he didn’t say ‘Thank you,’” Nibble looked about him in surprise, for Tommy had disappeared.
“He doesn’t keep it in his pocket, but he won’t forget it,” promised the Cow. And she wet her nostrils with her slaty tongue to sniff what it was going to be.
“He doesn’t talk our talk,” Watch explained, “but he does know the sign language of tails pretty well.”
“I told you,” she mooed triumphantly. For there came Tommy with his cap full of meal. He poured a big pile before her and a little one close to Nibble. But he gave Watch a great big hug.