The fawns never tired of watching the life that stirred everywhere about them, their great soft eyes filled with pleasant wonder.
One day it would be the one soft cluck of Mother Grouse Hen, calling to her chicks to hide before Frisky Fox should pass that way.
When he had passed, looking so wise and knowing, (with his bright eyes peering into every nook and corner, and his pointed little nose testing the air for a taint), Mother Grouse Hen would give a different sort of cluck; and back the frightened chicks would come to her, and she would gather them comfortingly under her wings, pressing each wee brown baby to her down-covered breast to reassure him.
Then she would utter a soft, brooding cluck that told them how she loved them, and how safe they were with Mother to look out for them.
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CHAPTER VI.—A STRANGE FRIENDSHIP.
What was the matter with the hen-roost at the Valley Farm, the fox pup asked himself? He had killed so many field mice in the course of the summer that he felt he was really entitled to one of the farmer’s nice fat hens,—because the mice might have destroyed the farmer’s crops, had Frisky not prevented.
At the same time he knew that Lop Ear, the hound at the Valley Farm, would have another opinion in the matter.