"It is just like the Zoo," declared Willie. "Or the animals in Æsop's Fables," suggested Maude.
This delighted the Dwarf very much, for though he looked so serious, he was full of good humour and skipped about with much agility.
"Good! Good!" he cried. "Æsop and the Zoo! Ha! Ha! He! He! Anybody can be a Zoo but only one can be Æsop, and I am he!"
"Æsop! Are you really Mr Æsop, the Phrygian Philosopher?" cried Maude.
"King Æsop, I should say," corrected Willie. "I am glad we have met you, because now, perhaps, you will kindly tell us what a Fable really is."
"A Fable," said the merry Æsop, with a twinkle in his witty eyes, "is a fictitious story about nothing that ever happened, related by nobody that ever lived. And the moral is, that every one is quite innocent, only they must not do it again!"
"Ah! that is only your fun," said Willie sagely, "because of the moral. Why do they give you so many morals?"
"I don't know," answered Æsop gravely. "But the Commentators and Editors do give a lot of applications and morals to the tales of my animals, don't they?"
"I like a tale with a moral," averred Maude, "it finishes everything up so satisfactorily, I think. Now, Mr Æsop, as you know so much, please tell us what a proverb is?"
"Ah!" replied Mr Æsop, "I don't make proverbs. There are too many already, but a proverb usually seems to me to be something you always theoretically remember to practically forget."