“What’s the matter?” Billy asked.
And at that Mr. Woodchuck sprang to his feet. But his wife made him lie down again. And she seemed pleased to see her son once more.
“Your father has been in a fight,” Mrs. Woodchuck said. “When the dog chased him he ran into an old woodchuck’s burrow.”
“That’s just what I did, too!” Billy exclaimed.
“Yes; but there was a weasel in the one in which your father hid,” his mother explained. “And your poor father’s nose is badly bitten.”
“It’s all his fault,” Mr. Woodchuck said, meaning Billy, of course. “He was a sentinel—and he ran away without warning us.”
“I didn’t have time,” Billy whimpered.
“If he were a soldier, he would be shot,” his father said, crossly.
Mrs. Woodchuck told her husband that he had better try to go to sleep.
“I said that Billy was too young to take to the clover field,” she reminded him.