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.