And nobody paid any attention to old Mr. Crow. Nobody made room for him.
He had to take a back seat on a limb that was crowded with boisterous
young fellows, who kept pushing and poking one another. It was most
annoying.
"Who's that person that's so fond of hearing himself talk?" Mr. Crow
asked someone in the next tree. He spoke in such a loud voice that
everybody could hear him. And the stranger cried out sharply:
"Silence!"
Thereupon everyone looked around at Mr. Crow and frowned.
He felt both angry and uncomfortable. And for a little while he sat as
still as he could and listened to the stranger's remarks.
Now, the newcomer was talking about the hard times. He said that there
weren't as many grasshoppers as usual that year, and that Farmer Green
had put tar on his corn before he planted it and that the rats had stolen
most of his young chickens (of course that left very few for _them_), and
that the wild berry crop was poor.
Everybody agreed with the stranger. And everybody nodded his head, as if
to say, "That's quite true!"--at least, everybody but Mr. Crow. He was
determined that he would not agree with anything the stranger said. And
so he shouted, "Nonsense!" at the top of his lungs.
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