Mr. Rat’s particular friend, was in a bad fix; how he had lost his way, and ‘They’ were up and out hunting, and were chivvying him round and round. ‘Then why didn’t any of you do something?’ I asked. ‘You mayn’t be blessed with brains, but there are hundreds and hundreds of you, big, stout fellows, as fat as butter, and your burrows running in all directions, and you could have taken him in and made him safe and comfortable, or tried to, at all events.’ ‘What, us ?’ he merely said: ‘ do something? us rabbits?’ So I cuffed him again and left him. There was nothing else to be done. At any rate, I had learnt something; and if I had had the luck to meet any of ‘Them’ I’d have learnt something more⁠—or they would.”