"Grandpaw Hare had sat down on the steps to wait, when all at once the
door opened behind him and he felt something grab him by the collar and
swing him in and set him down hard on a seat, and then he saw it was
King Lion, and he didn't much like his looks.

[Illustration: "'GLAD TO SEE YOU,' SAID KING LION; 'I WAS JUST THINKING
ABOUT HAVING A NICE RABBIT FOR BREAKFAST'"]

"'So it was you, was it, making that noise,' he said. 'Well, I'm glad to
see you, for I was just thinking about having a nice rabbit for
breakfast.'

"Then my twenty-seventh great-grandfather knew he'd made a mistake,
coming to see King Lion when he was feeling that way, and he had to
think pretty quick to know what to say. But our family have always been
pretty quick in their thoughts, and Grandpaw Hare spoke right up as
polite as could be, and said he would do anything he could to find a
nice young plump rabbit for King Lion, and that he would even be proud
to be a king's breakfast himself, only he wasn't so very young nor so
very plump, and, besides, there was that old prophecy about the king and
the cotton-tailed rabbit, which of course, he said, King Lion must have
heard about.

"Then King Lion said that my twenty-seventh great-grandfather was plenty
young enough and plenty plump enough, and that he'd never heard of any
prophecy about a cotton-tailed rabbit, and that he'd never heard of a
cotton-tailed rabbit, either.

"Then Grandpaw Hare just got up and turned around, and as he turned he
said, as solemnly as he could:

"'When the King eats a hare with a cotton tail,
Then the King's good health will fail.

"Well, that scared the King a good deal, for he was just getting over
one sick spell, and he was afraid if he had another right away he'd die
sure. He sat down and asked Grandpaw Hare to tell him how he came to
have a tail like that, and grandpaw told him, and it made the King laugh
and laugh, until he got well, and he said it was the best joke he ever
heard of, and that he'd have given some of the best ornaments off of his
crown to have seen that race.

"And the better King Lion felt the hungrier he got, and when my
Grandfather Hare asked him if he wouldn't decide the race in his favor,
he just glared at him and said if he didn't get out of there and hunt
him up a nice, young, plump, long-tailed rabbit, he'd eat him--cotton
tail, prophecy, and all--for he didn't go much on prophecies anyway.

"Then Grandpaw Hare got right up