an old beggar man. Then he found the boot in the quarry. There was a beetle in the boot and several slugs. Tommy Brock ate them. He is a nasty person. He will go on living in Mr. Tod's comfortable house till springtime – then he will move off into the woods & live out doors – and Mr. Tod will come back very, very cautiously – & there will need to be a big spring cleaning!" In 1915, the children of an unknown family living in a Devonshire rectory wrote to express their disappointment in the lack of a sequel to Mr. Tod. Potter enjoyed continuing the lives of her characters through these letters and responded:It is sad to have caused such disappointment! [...] I think I saw Tommy Brock's wife last week. I couldn't think who the person reminded me of, and when I read your letter I remembered directly! I am not sure how many of a family there are – lots! and what we call a "long" family, all ages with some long time between. I believe Tommy Brock is very grumpy with the grown-up ones, and makes them clear off into the woods; and, as you know, he is not often at home himself. Mrs. Badger is rather lighter coloured than he is, rather sandy, with little piggy eyes and a snouty nose, and a not particularly clean house, I should say – she finishes wearing out Tommy's celebrated boots. Mr. Tod has been across lately, I smelt him myself; but he had removed before the hounds came. Critical commentary The Tale of Mr. Tod was sketched out long before its 1912 publication, and is a forbidding tale with relief only in the landscape illustrations. Graham Greene thought Potter was suffering some sort of emotional disturbance when the tale was composed, but Potter denied the allegation and observed only that she was suffering the after-effects of the 'flu. She deprecated Greene's "Freudian school of criticism". There are a few inconsistencies from the naturalist's view point. Foxes and badgers are not necessarily mutual enemies in nature. Badgers do not normally invade the homes of foxes, and are not typically dirty. Badgers do sometimes eat bunnies, not from a predilection for bunnies but simply because they are omnivorous. The inconsistencies are few and employed to create individual characters rather than evoke an archetypical fox and badger. The