Curlywig looked up, and seeing a beetle, snapped his jaws at him but said nothing.
“Mr. Curlywig, sir, can you explain to me why you are here?”
“To eat beetles, I suppose. What better job can you have? I’d eat you if you would come down, though you look rather old and tough, and there are lots of young ones left yet.”
“Ah, but I sha’n’t come down, thank you,” said Butterwops, smiling blandly. “I suppose,” he continued, as if he was merely thinking it out, “you don’t know what it is like to be eaten, do you?”
“Not I,” said Curlywig, “How should I?”
“No, of course not,” said Butterwops. “Poor little fellow, how should he! It seems a cruel shame to bring him here for that. Poor little fellow!”
“Who is a poor little fellow?” asked Curlywig, rather angrily.
“That’s what the mistress said, while you were asleep,” said Butterwops, innocently, “as she was making the pie-crust. She said, ‘Poor little fellow, I hope they won’t hurt him skinning him!’”
Curlywig shivered in every prickle. “Who is to be skinned?” he snapped out, looking round nervously.
“The cookery book was open at Hedge-hog Tart,” went on Butterwops, quite coolly, as though he was talking about the weather, “and the servant said at the rate you were eating beetles she thought you would be fat enough by to-morrow.”