I knead the bread and bake it,
I starch and iron the clothes,
I wash the windows Saturday—"
"That's enough, my goodness knows!" finished Brighteyes for Jennie, with a laugh. "Land sakes! Jennie Chipmunk," the little guinea pig girl went on, "I should think you'd be tired with all that work! Come on and we'll take a walk in the woods."
So the two started, after Brighteyes had locked the door and put the key under the mat, where her mother could find it when she came back from the five and ten cent store, where she had gone to get a diamond ring—no, I mean a dishpan—no, a wash boiler—there, I've got it right at last.
Well, Jennie and Brighteyes walked on through the woods and sometimes they found huckleberries to eat, or they found pennyroyal, which is a nice plant to smell, and it keeps the mosquitoes away, when they want to stay away. And the two children found some blackberries, and they found spearmint and peppermint and then they got in a field where there was a lovely apple tree and they were just eating a few of the apples and putting some in their pockets, to take home, when, all of a sudden they heard a voice calling to them from behind the tree.
"Here, what are you doing with those apples?" cried the voice, and oh, such a harsh, ugly, cross voice as it was! It fairly made Brighteyes and Jennie shiver.
First they thought it was the man who owned the tree, and then Brighteyes remembered that he was the kind farmer whose cows she and Buddy had once driven home, when he had cut his foot, and she knew he wouldn't speak so cross to her. Then she thought it was a bad boy, but she looked, and so did Jennie, and they couldn't see any boy. Then the voice growled out again:
"Here, you leave those apples alone!" and goodness sakes alive, and a can of tomato soup! from behind the apple tree, there appeared the bad, ugly, old burglar fox! Oh, how frightened Brighteyes and Jennie Chipmunk were! They fairly trembled and shivered, though it was a hot day!
"Ah! ha!" cried the fox, curling back his lip, to show his ugly teeth, and blinking his eyes as fast as a moving picture goes when it skips along very quickly. "Ah! ha! Now I have caught you! Do you know what I am going to do to you for taking my apples?"