[Illustration: "BUT OH! WHAT HAVOC HE MADE!">[
They were not prickly like their mother, but just soft, helpless mites with curiously-shaped bodies, and funny little heads and snouts, which made them look very much like pigs.
An animal covered with hundreds of sharp quills, from ten to twelve inches in length, each of which can pierce like a little stiletto, does not sound like a particularly comfortable thing to have for a mother. But the baby porcupines were quite happy, and their mother, clumsy as she was, was clever enough never to let any of the quills touch her little ones. She was warm and soft enough underneath, and her babies were just as comfortable as any other animals' babies are.
Although Pero had laid in her stock for the winter, she went out every night to get food. By doing this she achieved two things: she kept her winter stock, and she got fresh food for the time being.
Everything went on very well, and Pero and her babies were perfectly happy in their little home, when one night Pero had a startling adventure.
She was going along doing her best to walk quietly, although this was next to impossible, for the quills in her tail would rustle, no matter how carefully she walked, when she suddenly became conscious of a tall, dark form coming towards her. She knew well enough what that was. It was a man, and anything in the shape of a man had to be most carefully guarded against.
Without an instant's hesitation, Pero suddenly doubled her nose between her forelegs, and rolled herself into a tight ball, leaving all her long, prickly spikes outside. This was a very convenient way of avoiding danger, but the only drawback to it was that, while she was coiled up, she could see nothing and hear very little.
However, she knew that the wisest thing was to keep perfectly still. And when she did this she was seldom touched. This time, however, something turned her over, and over, and over, till she felt sick and faint and dizzy; so dizzy at last that she suddenly unrolled herself a little bit in order to see where she was. To her great joy, she saw that she was near her burrow, and, with a wonderfully quick movement for so clumsy a creature, and with a peculiar rustling of all her quills, Pero crept quickly into her hole, leaving the man perfectly astonished.
For some time she lay there with her babies, quivering and shaking with fright—for the man was trying to get in. The light was getting broader and brighter, and at last, in sheer terror, Pero began to burrow further into the mound.
She went at it with nose and head and paws, as hard as she could go, scraping quickly with her sharp-clawed little feet, throwing the earth behind till she nearly smothered her babies, and pushing her snout- like nose into the earth as hard and fast as she could.