"Ah!" replied the Rabbit, "where _I_ live they use knives and
forks. And one day, while eating with some great sagamores, my knife
slipped, and I cut my lip."
"And why are your mouth and whiskers always going when you are still?
Is that high style?"
"Yes; I am meditating, planning, combining great affairs; talking to
myself, you see. That's the way _we_ do."
"But why do you always hop? Why don't you sometimes walk, like other
people?"
"Ah, that's _our_ style. We gentlemen don't run, like the vulgar.
_We_ have a gait of our own, don't you know?"
"Indeed! Well, if you don't mind a question, I would like to know why
you always scamper away so suddenly, and jump so far and so rapidly
when you run."
"Aw! don't you know? I used to be employed in very genteel business;
public service,--in fact, diplomatic. I carried dispatches
(_weegadigunn_, Micmac; _wighiggin_, Pass.)--books, letters,
papers, and so I got in the way of moving nimbly. Now it comes
naturally to me. One of my old aristocratic habits." [Footnote: This
droll dialogue occurs in the middle of the Micmac story of Lox, or
Badger, and the Ducks and Bear, where it evidently does not belong, or
has been interpolated to make length. In the original, Marten carries
his inquiries much further into certain physiological details, all of
which Master Rabbit naively explains as the result of the delicate diet
and the wine to which he as a gentleman had been accustomed.
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