Peter is a great gossip and cannot keep his tongue still.

So he had hurried this way and that way, telling every one he met how Sammy
Jay had moved away to the Old Pasture. But no one believed him.

"Wait and see! Wait and see!" said Jimmy Skunk.

"It's just a trick," said Bobby Coon.

"But Boomer the Nighthawk saw him up there going to bed and talked with
him!" cried Peter Rabbit.

"Perhaps he did and then again perhaps he didn't," replied Bobby Coon,
carefully washing an ear of sweet milky corn that he had brought down to
the Laughing Brook from Farmer Brown's corn-field, for Bobby Coon is very,
very neat and always washes his food before eating. "For my part," he
continued, "I believe that Boomer the Nighthawk just made up that story to
help Sammy Jay fool us."

"But that would be a wrong story, and I don't believe that Boomer would do
anything like that!" cried Peter.

Just then there was a shrill scream of "Thief! thief! thief!" over in the
alder bushes. It certainly sounded like Sammy Jay's voice.

"What did I tell you? Now what do you think?" cried Bobby Coon.

Peter didn't know what to think, and he said so. He left Bobby to eat his
corn and spent the rest of the night telling every one he met what Boomer
the Nighthawk had said, but of course no one believed it, and every one