It's this way--for every time a child refuses to take the dog on his back down here it grows a pound lighter up there, so at last any sensible child learns how much better it is to have nothing to say to it at all, and gets out of the way of it, you see.

Of course, there _are_ children whom nothing would cure, I suppose.

What becomes of them I really can't say.

Very likely they get crushed into pancakes by the weight of the dogs at last, and then nothing more is ever heard of them." "Horrid!" said Griselda, with a shudder.

"Don't let's talk about it any more, cuckoo; tell me your _own_ opinion about what there really is on the other side of the moon." The cuckoo was silent for a moment.