ve a wishbone inside you. I can feel
it!" she told him, as she prodded him in the waistcoat.

"I wish you could get it out for me!" said Solomon with a look of
distress.

"All the wishing in the world won't help you," she answered, "unless we
can find some way of removing the wishbone so you can wish on that. Then
I'm sure you would feel better at once."

"This is strange," Solomon mused. "All my life I've been swallowing my
food without chewing it. And it has never given me any trouble before....
What shall I do?"

"Don't eat anything for a week," she directed. "And fly against
tree-trunks as hard as you can. Then come back here after seven days."

Solomon Owl went off in a most doleful frame of mind. It seemed to him
that he had never seen so many mice and frogs and chipmunks as he came
across during the following week. But he didn't dare catch a single one,
on account of what Aunt Polly Woodchuck had said.

His pains, however, grew less from day to day--at least, the pains that had
first troubled him. But he had others to take their place. Hunger pangs,
these were! And they were almost as bad as those that had sent him
hurrying to see Aunt Polly Woodchuck.

On the whole, Solomon passed a very unhappy week. Flying head foremost
into tree-trunks (as Aunt Polly had instructed him to do) gave him many
bumps and bruises. So he was glad when the time came for him to return to
her house in the pasture.

Solomon's neighbors had been so interested in watching him that they were
all sorry when he ceased his strange actions. Indeed, there was a rumor
that Solomon had become very angry with Farmer Green and that he was
trying to knock down some of Farmer Green's trees. Before the end of that
unpleasant week Solomon had often noticed as many as twenty-four of the
forest folk following him about, hoping to see a tree fall.

But they were all disappointed. However, they enjoyed the sight of Solomon
hurling himself against tree-trunks. And the louder he groaned, the more
people gathered around him.

XI
CURED AT LAST

"How do you feel now?" Aunt Polly Woodchuck asked Solomon Owl, when he had
come back to her house after a week's absence.

"No better!" he groaned. "I still have pains. But they seem to have moved
and scattered all over me."

"Good!" she exclaimed with a smile. "You _are_ much better, though you
didn't know it. The wishbone is broken. You broke it by flying against the
trees. And you ought not