Crow grumbled. "Here she's gone and cured my
foot almost a week before I wanted her to!"
And the next day he went over to see the old lady and complain about her
mistake.
"What have you been eating?" she asked Mr. Crow.
He told her.
"Ah!" said Aunt Polly. "It's your mistake--and not mine. You ate what
was in your _left-hand pocket_, instead of what was in the right-hand
one. If you had followed my instructions everything would have been all
right."
Old Mr. Crow felt very much ashamed. There was nothing he could say. So
he slunk away and moped for three days.
Though he did not know it, the trouble with his foot was simply this: He
had daubed so much tar on his foot, in Farmer Green's cornfield, that the
soft earth had stuck to it in a big ball.
Mr. Crow recovered his spirits at last. And neither he nor Aunt Polly
Woodchuck ever discovered that he never had gout at all. He forgave her,
at last, for having cured his foot too quickly, for the affair gave him
something to talk about for a long time afterward. He never tired of
telling his friends about the trouble he had had.
But many of the feathered folk in Pleasant Valley grew very weary of the
tale before they heard the last of it.
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