"

And, of course, the good old lady was not. Perhaps you have already
guessed that Farmer Green was blasting away the stumps with
powder. Anyhow, the Woodchuck family had a narrow escape.

And as for Mr. Woodchuck, he was never seen in those parts
afterward. When anyone asked for him, his wife always said that he
had gone on a visit to see his cousin, who lived in the West, and
she really didn't know when he would come back again. "He didn't
tell me that," she would explain, "for he left in a great hurry.
But I am looking for him every day. The house is _so_ quiet without
him."

And that was quite true. For you see, Mr. Woodchuck was always
groaning and complaining about his health.

Perhaps it agreed with him better where he went.

XXI

AT HOME IN THE WOODS

Mrs. Woodchuck was not so sorry, after all, that she had to leave
her home in the pasture. You see, she always moved twice a year,
anyhow. Every fall she went into the woods to live; and every
spring she returned to Farmer Green's pasture. And every time that
Mrs. Woodchuck moved, she made a new house for herself.

To be sure, there were plenty of chucks that never went to all that
trouble. They were the lazy kind. They just hunted around till they
found an old, empty house and then they moved in and made
themselves right at home. But that was not the way of Billy
Woodchuck's mother. She wanted everything neat and clean.

You remember that when Farmer Green blasted away the old stump near
Mrs. Woodchuck's bedroom he tore a hole in the very roof of the
house. And Billy and his mother and his brothers and sisters went
into the woods and spent the night in a house where his great
grandmother had once lived.

Mrs. Woodchuck said it would do, until she could dig a new one.

The very next morning she started to work. And all her children
helped her.

Billy told his mother that they ought to build the back door first
of all. You see he remembered what his mother had taught him, early
in the summer, when he made his play-houses.

"Nonsense!" she said. "Of course, we must have a back door. But we
must dig it from the _inside up_, and not from the _outside down_."

And she explained that when you build a door by digging _down_ into
the ground, there's always a heap of dirt about it, which anybody
can see. But when you are out of sight in your tunnel you can dig
right _up_ to the top of the ground and make a small, round door,
beneath a hummock of