“I will stay,” Stripes answered firmly.
“Then it is war! War to the tooth!” announced Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse. And off he humped, followed by all his family.
“Now what do you suppose those mice did to Tad Coon?” mused Doctor Muskrat.
Nibble takes the lady mouse to Doctor Muskrat
CHAPTER XII
THE MICE DEFEAT THEMSELVES
Stripes wasn’t a bit afraid, but he didn’t want every one else to suffer on his account. “I’ll go away willingly,” he told Doctor Muskrat, “if you think I ought to.”
“I don’t,” snapped the old doctor. “I think we might as well fight it out now. If we give in to them there’s no knowing what they’ll demand next. You’d think this world belonged to the fieldmice!” he snorted. (That’s one of the things Great-Grandfather Fieldmouse had said at the meeting, you know.) “A pretty place this world would be if they tried to run it. Next thing they’ll be saying they made it themselves, instead of Mother Nature.”
“But there are a great many fieldmice,” argued Stripes. “They may do a lot of harm.”
“They can’t do much more than they always have,” the angry old muskrat snorted harder than ever. “If they haven’t enough sense to see that, what more can you expect of them? The whole tail-and-whiskers of them, taken together, hasn’t the brains of a bullfrog.”