"Well, of all things!" he finally gasped, as he held his sides. "How mighty kind of them!" Then, licking his chops, and fairly choking with humor, he set off just as fast as he could go. Up the shore and through the woods he ran; and at a certain tree where a great sentinel crow sat eying the farmers in a distant field, he barked out one short, sharp message.
He had to say nothing more. Before he could get back to the spot where the delicious supper was stored, the crows were coming, one and two at a time, then three and four, and finally a small flock of them.
Mr. Fox got very little for his pains, for the crows were as quick as lightning in their motions. Up in the air they flew with an oyster in their beaks, and over the rocks and bowlders which jutted from the shore they would pause but a second to drop their burden. Down it would come, breaking to pieces as it fell on the rock, and then the crow would come down almost as fast as the oyster, to tear out the meat and swallow it. Mr. Fox played around the edges, as it were; for too many crows had come, and they fought him off when he tried to snap up his share.
"Oh, well, I don't care much for oysters anyway," he muttered, trying to console himself. But he was in reality bitterly tantalized, and he was truly in tears of disgust when the great black crowd of noisy birds flew at him in a body and drove him off. They benefited by his confidence, but they were utterly selfish, and he suddenly felt wickedly put upon.
What he had done to the Coons never occurred to him.
Mr. Coon never recovered from the mortification of that evening. The guests had assembled in a body; all of his brother's family and their dependents, and the little 'Possums, who were so set up at the invitation that they fairly beamed. Such toilets had been performed and such preparation of pleasant remarks had gone on, that everybody was in the finest of party feeling.
The walk through the corn-field, the ease and happy expectancy! Getting down the mud-bank was not altogether a formal ceremony, for some slid, and some just plunged headlong; but at the bottom everybody brushed his clothes, and the little Coons and the little 'Possums danced in glee.
Then, lo and behold, there was no supper at all! The work that the crows had done was apparent enough. But how they ever knew where to find the banquet was an unsolved mystery to Mr. Coon.
Never again did Ringtail or his wife try to be fashionable. "Dig and swallow," became the rule at all the oyster suppers; and even at this one, after the disaster had bestowed its first stunning blow, the guests and the company as a whole fell to digging as hard as they could, and ate with might and main.
Mrs. Coon, having urged the 'Possums to come, had to open oysters until her thumbs were sore; but she did it with a good grace, and after everybody got to going, there was all the laughter and happiness the heart could wish.