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 and said, 'Good day,' and backed out
and made tracks for the rest of his family, and told them that King Lion
had just got up from a sick spell that had given him an appetite for
long-tailed rabbits. He said that the King had sent him out to get one,
and that King Lion would most likely be along himself pretty soon. He
said the sooner the Rabbit family took pattern after the new
cotton-tailed style the more apt they'd be to