XVII
A SLIGHT MISTAKE
Scarcely had Dickie Deer Mouse plunged into the woods when he met Fatty Coon coming in the opposite direction.
"Hullo!" Fatty said, looking up at Dickie, who had scrambled into a tree as soon as he caught sight of Fatty's plump form. "What have you been doing in Farmer Green's pasture! I thought you always stayed in the woods—unless you happened to go to the cornfield."
"I've been looking for a winter home," Dickie explained. "And I've just found the finest one you ever saw."
"Where is it!" Fatty asked him. "I might want to pay you a call some night—when I had nothing else to do."
Dickie Deer Mouse was in such a cheerful mood that almost anything Fatty Coon might have said would have pleased him.
"My new house is just beyond the fence," Dickie explained. "But I'm afraid you can't very well visit me there," he added with a smile.
"Why not?" Fatty Coon inquired. "I'm as good a climber as anybody. I can climb the tallest tree you ever saw, without feeling dizzy. But of course I'm a bit heavier than you are. And if you've gone and picked out a nest that's a long way above the ground, among the smallest branches, it might not be safe for me to go all the way up to it."