“Not a bit of it,” cried the wolf and the bear; “not a bit of it. A root? How can you say so? It is not that, we can all see.”
“If I might speak,” said an old owl, who sat in a tree near, “I think I can tell you what it is. I have been in a land where there are more of such things than you could count. It is a man’s boot.”
“A what?” cried all the beasts and birds. “What is a man? and what is a boot?”
“A man,” said the owl, “is a thing with two legs that can walk and eat and talk, like us; but he can do much more than we can.”
“Pooh, pooh!” cried they all.
“That can’t be true,” said the beasts. “How can a thing with two legs do more than we can, who have four? It is false, of course.”
“Of course it is if they have no wings,” said the birds.
“Well,” went on the owl, “they have no wings, and yet it is true. And they can make things like this, and they call them boots and put them on their feet.”
“Oh, oh!” cried all the beasts and birds at once. “How can you? For shame. Fie on you! That is not true, of course. It can not be.”
“A likely story!” said the bear.