Mr. Beaver looked at her for a while before he spoke, loth to lessen the pleasure she found in anticipating so great an event, and then he kindly but firmly said: “I do not like to differ from you. I dislike to. Nevertheless, I do not think it is wise in us to attend Mr. Rabbit’s dining. It is flattering to be invited to the tables of the great, but it is unwise to accept attentions that cannot be returned. To return such a compliment we are in no way prepared. To accept it would put us under an obligation that we could not discharge, and we would be carrying the burden of a debt we could not pay. Mr. Rabbit is wealthy. He has a broad briar patch in which he is safe, and into which not even Mr. Rattlesnake can enter. He has an abundance of clover and sweet grasses and tender buds at his door and his home is spacious. But these he neither created, produced nor builded. They were given him, and he has no other interest in them save possession. With us, what we have we produced by our own efforts. We cut down and hauled trees and fashioned houses and dams. We are our own architect and builder. Unlike some animals who claim to be much wiser than we and who design and build houses for other people, while going homeless themselves, we provided for ourselves and what we have is our own. So long as we guard it and continue our custom of healthy, hard work, we will be happy. As soon as we leave our narrow sphere we will meet trouble. Our bodies are covered with rich fur that is seasonable enough, but our tails are covered with scales, and strange company would not know how to take us. They could not make flesh of one and fish of the other.” As he said this Mr. Beaver felt much pleased with his own fluent rhetoric. Mrs. Beaver, who had listened glumly, was silenced but not convinced. She puffed up and said nothing. Her heart was set on going to the dining, and no argument could change her. And the misery of it all was her silence. Had she said something or done something; had she talked back, or thrown a billet of wood at Mr. Beaver, it would have been a relief to him. But she merely _looked_ and said nothing, and this was killing. Mr. Beaver returned moodily to his work, feeling that his philosophy was weak and useless, and that there are times when it is better to be unwisely happy than to be unhappily wise.