Sister Alligator's sleepy eyes opened wider.
"I have the very idea!" she exclaimed. "Just send Old Lady Wildcat an invitation to come to the picnic. Then I'll swim out into the pond and dive under and drown her, for all of you mud-turtles can swim."
Miss Mud-Turtle laughed so hard she had to wipe the tears from her eyes.
"Sister Alligator, your sleepy old head is not on your body for nothing! You surely have some brains! That is the very idea for disposing of Old Lady Wildcat! I'll make a carpet out of her soft hide for my young friends to play on before the sun goes down."
So Miss Mud-Turtle sent an invitation to Old Lady Wildcat, all written on a grape leaf in grand style. It told of the big dinner they were to have, and where it was to be, and that Sister Alligator would carry them all across the pond on her back.
When Old Lady Wildcat got the invitation she mewed to Mr. 'Possum, who had brought it, that she would be there all right, but that they must be very careful when they carried her over the pond, as her rheumatism was bad.
Then, when Mr. 'Possum went to take her message to Miss Mud-Turtle, Old Lady Wildcat laughed so loudly she had to hide her face with her paws for fear Miss Mud-Turtle would hear her. She was just planning how to get the best of Miss Mud-Turtle.
"Whenever I dine with low-down mud-turtles and alligators it is time for me to lose this fine coat of mine. I suppose they forget who I am! Ha! What would all my grandchildren think of their grandmother dining with mud-turtles!"
Then she began laughing again, and her grandchildren, who were sleeping away up in the branches of a big pine-tree, came down to see what had tickled her so.
Old Lady Wildcat was holding her sides and dancing about in glee.