uessed Mr. Man would not be willing to have Erastus go out on an
invitation like that, and that if Erastus came, Mr. Man might take a
notion to visit the Hollow Tree himself. Then the Hollow Tree People
all said, "Oh, never mind about Erastus! He's probably old and
disagreeable anyway. We don't think we would care for him. But it was a
nice story--very nice, indeed."

And pretty soon Mr. Dog said he'd been thinking about the robber animal,
too, and had made up his mind that it might have been one of Mr. Cat's
family--for Mr. Man's little boy and girl had a book with a nice poem in
it about a robber cat, and a robber dog, too, though he didn't think
that the dog could have been any of _his_ family. Mr. Cat, he said,
would not be likely to care for Erastus, feathers and all, that way, and
no doubt it really was Mr. Cat who robbed him. Mr. Dog said that he had
once heard of a Mr. Cat who wanted to be king--perhaps after Mr. Lion
had gone out of the king business, and that there was an old poem about
it that Mr. Dog's mother used to sing to him, but he didn't think it had
ever been put into a book. He said there were a good many things in it
he didn't suppose the Hollow Tree People would understand because it was
about a different kind of a country--where his mother had been born--but
that if they really would like to hear it he would try to remember it
for them, as it would be something different from anything they had been
used to. Then the Hollow Tree People and their friends all said how glad
they would be to hear it, for they always liked to hear about new
things and new parts of the country; so Mr. Dog said that if some of the
others would read or sing or dance their jigs first, perhaps it would
come to him and he would sing it for them by and by.

Then Mr. Robin spoke up and said that he thought Mr. Dog's story had a
good moral in it, and he said that _his_ story (Mr. Robin's, of course)
was that kind of a story, too. Perhaps he'd better tell it now, he said,
while their minds were running that way, though as for Mr. 'Possum's
mind it seemed to be more on how good Erastus might be cooked than how
good he had become in his behavior. He was sorry, he said, that his
story didn't have any ducks in it, young or old, but that perhaps Mr.
'Possum and the others would be willing to wait for the nice pair of
cooked ones now hanging in Mr. Crow's pantry, to be served at the end of
the literary exercises.

But Mr. 'Possum sai