“Hey, Bunny!” called the doctor. “Where’s Tad?”
“He hasn’t been with me,” Nibble called back. “I haven’t the least idea.”
“Well, where were you, then?” the doctor wanted to know.
“Studying scents,” said Nibble. But his whiskers bristled as though he were trying to keep from laughing. He had a secret all right.
“Well, you just study a scent or two over by Tad’s tree and see where he’s gone. We have to have him.”
Just then who should come crawling up but Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse. You remember him. He’s very fat and old; so fat that his tummy drags on the earth like Miner the Mole’s; so old that his ears are all crinkled. He makes as much fuss getting over the ground as a mud turtle and lots more noise with his grunting and sniffling. And of course he had a bodyguard of his family. He has a tremendous one, you know—a great big stump simply alive with them. Watch escorted him to the flat stone where Doctor Muskrat was sitting.
Doctor Muskrat greeted him. “We ’re all ready to listen,” he said, “except Tad Coon. We can’t find him.”
“Uff, uff!” panted Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse. “We’ll pass over the matter of Tad Coon, then. It’s unimportant. Then we can get down to business.”
“Crawling Crawfishes!” thought Doctor Muskrat. “He must know something about what’s happened to Tad.” He was puzzled.
When Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse said that he was willing to pass over the question of Tad Coon, that meant only one thing—he didn’t think there was any question. He must know that something had happened to Tad. But it’s no use asking anything of a fieldmouse. So Doctor Muskrat didn’t try.