They measured first one, and then the other. Then they measured them again, and frowned. They were exactly the same length.
“Now what are you going to do?” asked Pink Nose.
“Stay here, of course. I have as much right as you.”
“Then I’ll stay, too. You can’t frighten me away, and I don’t intend to have all my work for nothing.”
Bumper found them in this unyielding state of mind, with neither one willing to give way to the other. Recalling their remarks about Billy Porcupine and Washer the Raccoon, Bumper smiled to himself. After all they were not much less selfish than Billy and Washer when put to the real test. It is always easier to preach than practice.
“It seems to me,” Bumper remarked after a while, “that we’d better make a two-family house out of this burrow. That’s the simplest solution of the problem.”
“How can we do that?” asked Rolly Polly. “I never heard of such a thing. My family could never live with Pink Nose’s family.”
“No, but you could dig to the right, and Pink Nose to the left, starting from this meeting point,” Bumper explained. “Your burrow would be on the right, and Pink Nose’s on the left, and you could each use your own entrance to it. Then you wouldn’t have to do the work you’ve done all over again.”
This pleased both of them, and they began burrowing to the right and left until they had the first two-family house ever built in the woods. Each had its separate entrance, which met in a common hall at their doors. The next story will tell of Downy the Woodpecker and Belt the Sapsucker.