somebody would
have had to come and undo the knot.

[Illustration: MR. 'POSSUM WANTED TO KNOW WHAT MR. RABBIT MEANT BY
SPINNING THEIR TAILS]

Then he said he wanted to ask some questions. He said he wanted to know
what "wold" meant, and also what Mr. Rabbit meant by spinning their
tails. He said he hadn't noticed that any of them were spinning their
tails, and that he couldn't do it if he tried. He said that he could
curl his tail and hang from a limb or a peg by it, and he had found it a
good way to go to sleep when things were on his mind, and that he
generally had better dreams when he slept that way.

He said that of course Mr. Rabbit's poem had been about tails of the
long ago, and he supposed that he meant the ones which his family had
lost about three hundred years ago, according to Mr. Turtle, but that he
didn't believe they ever could spin them much, or that Mr. Rabbit could
spin what he had left.

Mr. 'Possum was going on to say a good deal more on the subject, but Mr.
Rabbit interrupted him.

He said he didn't suppose there was anybody else in the world whose food
seemed to do him so little good as Mr. 'Possum's, and that very likely
it was owing to the habit he had of sleeping with his head hanging down
in that foolish way. He said he had never heard of anybody who ate so
much and knew so little.

Of course, he said, everybody might not know what "wold" meant, as it
wasn't used much except by poets who used the best words, but that it
meant some kind of a field, and it was better for winter use, as it
rhymed with cold and was nearly always used that way. As for Mr.
'Possum's other remark, he said he couldn't imagine how anybody would
suppose that the tales he meant were those other tails which were made
to wave or wag or flirt or hang from limbs by, instead of being stories
to be told or written, just as the Deep Woods People were telling and
writing them now. He said there was an old expression about having a
peg to hang a tale on, and that it was most likely gotten up by one of
Mr. 'Possum's ancestors or somebody who knew as little about such things
as Mr. 'Possum, and that another old expression which said "Thereby
hangs a tale" was just like it, because the kind of tales he meant
didn't hang, but were always told or written, while the other kind
always did hang, and were never told or written, but were only sometimes
told or written about, and it made him feel sad, he said, to have to
explain hi