"Seeing that I haven't anything in particular to do, I don't know but I will," replied Old Man Coyote, who happened to be feeling very good-natured. "Many and many a time I have chased Yap-Yap into his house. Seems as if I can hear the rascal scolding me and calling me names right this minute. He used to get me so provoked that it was all I could do to keep from trying to dig him out."
"Why didn't you?" asked Peter.
"Because it would have meant a waste of time, sore feet, and nothing to show for my trouble," retorted Old Man Coyote. "Yap-Yap never has forgotten what his great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather learned when he first took to living on the open prairie."
"What did he learn? Tell me about it, Mr. Coyote," begged Peter.
"He learned to use his wits," replied Old Man Coyote, with a provoking grin. "He learned to use his wits, that's all."
"Please tell me about it, Mr. Coyote. Please," begged Peter.
"Once upon a time," began Old Man Coyote, "so my grandfather told me, and he got it from his grandfather, who got it from his grandfather, who—"
"I know," interrupted Peter. "It happened in the days when the world was young."
Old Man Coyote looked at Peter very hard as if he had half a mind not to tell the story, but Peter looked so innocent and so eager that he began again. "Once upon a time lived the great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather of Yap-Yap, the very first of all the Prairie Dogs, and his name was Yap-Yap too. He was own cousin to old Mr. Woodchuck, who of course wasn't old then, and the two cousins looked much alike, save that Yap-Yap was a little smaller than Mr. Woodchuck and perhaps a little smarter looking.
"From the very beginning Yap-Yap was a keen lover of the great open spaces. Trees were all very well for those who liked them, but he preferred to have nothing above him but the blue, blue sky. It seemed to him that he never could find a big enough open space, so he never stayed very long in any one place, but kept pushing on and on, looking for a spot in the Great World that would just suit him. At last he came to the edge of the Green Forest, and before him, as far as he could see, stretched the Green Meadows. At least it was like the Green Meadows, only a million thousand times as big as the Green Meadows we are on now, Peter, and was really the Great Prairie.