go in the faraway Village
of Liver-and-Onions, the people who ate cream puffs came together and
met in the streets and picked up their baggage and put their
belongings on their shoulders and marched out of the Village of
Liver-and-Onions saying, "We shall find a new place for a village and
the name of it shall be the Village of Cream Puffs.

[Illustration: They held on to the long curved tails of the rusty rats]

"'They marched out on the prairie with their baggage and belongings in
sacks on their shoulders. And a blizzard came up. Snow filled the sky.
The wind blew and blew and made a noise like heavy wagon axles
grinding and crying.

"'The snow came on. The wind twisted all day and all night and all the
next day. The wind changed black and twisted and spit icicles in their
faces. They got lost in the blizzard. They expected to die and be
buried in the snow for the wolves to come and eat them.

"'Then the five lucky rats came, the five rusty rats, rust on their
skin and hair, rust on their feet and noses, rust all over, and
especially, most especially of all, rust on their long curved tails.
They dug their noses down into the snow and their long curved tails
stuck up far above the snow where the people who were lost in the
blizzard could take hold of the tails like handles.

"'And so, while the wind and the snow blew and the blizzard beat its
icicles in their faces, they held on to the long curved tails of the
rusty rats till they came to the place where the Village of Cream
Puffs now stands. It was the rusty rats who saved their lives and
showed them where to put their new village. That is why this statue
now stands in the public square, this statue of the shapes of the five
rusty rats, the five lucky rats with their noses down in the snow and
their long curved tails lifted high out of the snow.'

"That is the story as my grandfather told it to me. And he said it
happened long ago, long before the snow birds began to wear slip-on
hats and slip-on shoes, long before they learned how to slip off the
slip-on hats and to slip off the slip-on shoes."

"O-h-h-h," said one of the uncles. "Um-m-m-m," said the other three
uncles.

"And sometime," added Wing Tip the Spick, "when you go away from the
Village of Liver-and-Onions and cross the Shampoo River and ride many
miles across the upland prairie till you come to the Village of Cream
Puffs, you will find a girl there who loves four uncles very much.

"And if you a