“Then it ought to be safe for anybody to enter the chicken house,” Tommy Fox observed. “What could the stranger do, when he’s in such a fix?”
“He could set the chicken house afire, if he followed you inside,” replied Solomon Owl wisely. “And I, for one, am not going near the pullets to-night.”
“Nor I!” Fatty Coon echoed. “I’m going straight to the cornfield. The corn is still standing there in shocks; and I ought to find enough ears to make a good meal.”
But Solomon Owl and Tommy Fox were not interested in corn. They never ate it. And so it is not surprising that they should be greatly disappointed. After a person has his mouth all made up for chicken it is hard to think of anything that would taste even half as good.
“It’s queer he doesn’t go and hold his head under the pump,” said Solomon Owl. “That’s what I should do, if I were he.”
“Jimmy Rabbit had better not go too near him, or he’ll get singed,” said Tommy Fox, anxiously. “I don’t want anything to happen to him.”
“Jimmy Rabbit is very careless,” Solomon declared. “I don’t see what he’s thinking of—going so near a fire! It makes me altogether too nervous to stay here. And I’m going away at once.”
Tommy Fox said that he felt the same way. And the moment Fatty Coon, with his sharp claws, started to crawl down the tree on his way to the cornfield, Tommy Fox hurried off without even stopping to say good-bye.
“Haw-haw-haw-hoo!” laughed Solomon Owl. “Tommy Fox is afraid of you!” he told Fatty Coon.
But Fatty didn’t seem to hear him. He was thinking only of the supper of corn that he was going to have.