de, my dear, in
the circumstances," said I. But I was mistaken.

I know nothing more annoying to a father who has learned the danger of
indiscreet curiosity in his youth, than to find his sons apparently
quite uninfluenced by his valuable experience.

"What are tinkers like?" was the first thing said by each one of the
seven on the subject.

"They are a set of people," I replied, in a voice as sour as a green
crab, "who if they hear us talking, or catch us walking abroad, will
kill your mother and me, and temper up two bits of clay and roll us up
in them. Then they will put us into a fire to bake, and when the clay
turns red they will take us out. The clay will fall off and our coats
with it. What remains they will eat--as we eat snails. You seven will be
flitted. That is, you will be pegged to the ground till you grow big."
(I thought it well not to mention the bread and milk.) "Then they will
kill and bake and eat you in the same fashion."

I think this frightened the children; but they would talk about the
tinkers, though they dared not go near them.

"The best thing you can do," said Mrs. Hedgehog, "is to tell them a
story to keep them quiet. You can modulate your own voice, and stop if
you hear the tinkers."

Hereupon I told them a story (a very old one) of the hedgehog who ran a
race with a hare, on opposite sides of a hedge, for the wager of a louis
d'or and a bottle of brandy. It was a great favourite with them.

"The moral of the tale, my dear children," I was wont to say, "is, that
our respected ancestor's head saved his heels, which is never the case
with giddy-pated creatures like the hare."

"Perhaps it was a very young hare," said Mrs. Hedgehog, who is amiable,
and does not like to blame any one if it can be avoided.

"I don't think it can have been a _very_ young hare," said I, "or the
hedgehog would have eaten him instead of outwitting him. As it was, he
placed himself and Mrs. Hedgehog at opposite ends of the course. The
hare started on one side of the hedge and the hedgehog on the other.
Away went the hare like the wind, but Mr. Hedgehog took three steps and
went back to his place. When the hare reached his end of the hedge, Mrs.
Hedgehog, from the other side, called out, 'I'm here already.' Her voice
and her coat were very like her husband's, and the hare was not
observant enough to remark a slight difference of size and colour. The
moral of which is, my dear children, that one must use his