Well, I'll tell you what it was, so you can understand the story better. It was a firecracker. Yes, sir, a big, red firecracker that, somehow or other, hadn't gone off on Fourth of July when it ought to have done so.
I presume some boy had lighted it, tossed it into the bushes and it had gone out and stayed out until Buddy found it. At any rate, he didn't know what it was, and he took it home. Neither did Mr. Pigg know what it was, but Buddy's mother and sister thought it was quite a pretty ornament, and Mrs. Pigg put it on the parlor mantle, where company could see it.
Well, one day, not long after this, Dr. Pigg was home all alone, for his wife and the children had gone to a moving-picture show. He was dozing away in his easy chair, with a newspaper over his face to keep away the flies, when, all of a sudden, there came a knock on the door.
"My goodness alive! Who's there?" cried Dr. Pigg.
"It's me," answered a voice.
"And who, pray tell, may you be?" asked Dr. Pigg.
"I'm a bad tramp fox," was the answer, "and I want you to give me something to eat. Quick! I'm in a hurry!"
Now that wasn't a nice way to speak, and Dr. Pigg knew it, and, what is more, that bad fox knew it, too. But, do you s'pose he cared? Not a bit of it. He was as impolite as he could be, and he took pride in it.
"I want something to eat in a hurry," he went on, in a coarse, grumbly voice, and he was such a big fox, and Dr. Pigg was such a nice, gentle kind of a creature that he didn't dare refuse him.
"Very well," said Buddy's papa, "step into the parlor, Mr. Fox, and I'll see what I can do for you. There ought to be something in the pantry."