Grunty and Spot both turned and ran in opposite directions. Grunty didn't see Spot again for more than a week. When they did at last meet, old Spot never mentioned tails at all. To tell the truth, he seemed to feel somewhat ashamed of himself for having tried to play a trick on Grunty Pig.
Or maybe he felt ashamed because he was caught at it.
XXI
BEECHNUTS
Down the hill, a little way from Farmer Green's house, a great beech tree stood beside the road. In the fall, when the nuts were ripe, Johnnie Green often visited the tree. And so did Frisky Squirrel. And so, likewise, did that noisy rascal, Jasper Jay. They liked beechnuts—all three. And somehow they got the notion that the beech tree belonged to them—and to nobody else.
One fine, crisp fall day when Johnnie Green was in school, a fourth nut-lover wandered down the road, stopped right between the wheel tracks, and sniffed. It was Grunty Pig. "I smell beechnuts!" he cried with a joyful squeal. And crashing into the light underbrush along the roadside, he began to search among the fallen leaves with his long nose.
Soon Grunty came upon a cluster of the three-sided nuts, clinging inside a bur that the frost had split open. He ate the sweet nuts, shells and all. And with many a grunt of delight he grubbed beneath the tree from which the nuts had fallen. His keen nose led him to burs that Johnnie Green had trampled over that very morning, and missed.
"I wonder—" said Grunty Pig aloud—"I wonder why nobody ever told me about this beech tree."