isdom
of sly old Granny.

CHAPTER XXVII: Prickly Porky Takes A Sun Bath

Danger comes when least expected;
'T is often near when not expected.
--Old Granny Fox.

The long hard winter had passed, and Spring had come. Prickly Porky
the Porcupine came down from a tall poplar-tree and slowly stretched
himself. He was tired of eating. He was tired of swinging in the
tree-top.

"I believe I'll have a sun-bath," said Prickly Porky, and lazily walked
toward the edge of the Green Forest in search of a place where the sun
lay warm and bright.

Now Prickly Porky's stomach was very, very full. He was fat and
naturally lazy, so when he came to the doorstep of an old house just on
the edge of the Green Forest he sat down to rest. It was sunny and warm
there, and the longer he sat the less like moving he felt. He looked
about him with his dull eyes and grunted to himself.

"It's a deserted house. Nobody lives here, and I guess nobody'll care if
I take a nap right here on the doorstep," said Prickly Porky to himself.
"And I don't care if they do," he added, for Prickly Porky the Porcupine
was afraid of nobody and nothing.

So Prickly Porky made himself as comfortable as possible, yawned once or
twice, tried to wink at jolly, round, red Mr. Sun, who was winking and
smiling down at him and then fell fast asleep right on the doorstep of
the old house.

Now the old house had been deserted. No one had lived in it for a long,
long time, a very long time indeed. But it happened that, the night
before, old Granny Fox and Reddy Fox had had to move out of their nice
home on the edge of the Green Meadows because Farmer Brown's boy had
found it. Reddy was very stiff and sore, for he had been shot by a
hunter. He was so sore he could hardly walk, and could not go very far.
So old Granny Fox had led him to the old deserted house and put him to
bed in that.

"No one will think of looking for us here, for every one knows that no
one lives here," said old Granny Fox, as she made Reddy as comfortable
as possible.

As soon as it was daylight, Granny Fox slipped out to watch for Farmer
Brown's boy, for she felt sure that he would come back to the house they
had left, and sure enough he did. He brought a spade and dug the house
open, and all the time old Granny Fox was watching him from behind a
fence corner and laughing to think that she had been smart enough to
move in the night.

But Reddy Fox didn't know anything about t