it."

XVI

OLD GRANNY FOX LOSES HER DIGNITY

Unc' Billy Possum had passed the word along to Jimmy Skunk, Peter
Rabbit, and Prickly Porky that old Granny Fox would be on hand at
sun-up to see for herself the strange creature which had frightened
Reddy Fox at the foot of the hill where Prickly Porky lives. How did
Unc' Billy know? Well, he just guessed. He is quite as shrewd and
clever as Granny Fox herself, and when he told her that the only time
the strange creature everybody was talking about was seen was at
sun-up, he guessed by the very way she sniffed and pretended not to
believe it at all that she would visit Prickly Porky's hill the next
morning.

"The ol' lady suspects that there is some trick, and we-uns have got
to be very careful," warned Unc' Billy, as he and his three friends
put their heads together in the early evening. "She is done bound to
come snooping around before sun-up," he continued, "and we-uns must be
out of sight, all excepting Brer Porky. She'll come just the way she
did this afternoon,--from back of the hill instead of along the
holler."

Unc' Billy was quite right. Old Granny Fox felt very sure that some
one was playing tricks, so she didn't wait until jolly, round, red Mr.
Sun was out of bed. She was at the top of the hill where Prickly Porky
lives a full hour before sun-up, and there she sat down to wait. She
couldn't see or hear anything in the least suspicious. You see, Unc'
Billy Possum was quite out of sight, as he sat in the thickest part of
a hemlock-tree, and Peter Rabbit was sitting perfectly still in a
hollow log, and Jimmy Skunk wasn't showing so much as the tip of his
nose, as he lay just inside the doorway of an old house under the
roots of a big stump. Only Prickly Porky was to be seen, and he seemed
to be asleep in his favorite tree. Everything seemed to be just as old
Granny Fox had seen it a hundred times before.

At last the Jolly Little Sunbeams began to dance through the Green
Forest, chasing out the Black Shadows. Redeye the Vireo awoke and at
once began to sing, as is his way, not even waiting to get a mouthful
of breakfast. Prickly Porky yawned and grunted. Then he climbed down
from the tree he had been sitting in, walked slowly over to another,
started to climb it, changed his mind, and began to poke around in the
dead leaves. Old Granny Fox arose and slowly stretched. She glanced at
Prickly Porky contemptuously. She had seen him act in this stupid,
u