"I don't know. Maybe a burglar fox," answered the porcupine also, in a whisper. "But I'm all ready for him."
So he got out some of his sharpest stickery quills to jab into the burglar fox, and the noise still kept up:
"Cheep! Cheep! Yip! Yip! Yap! Yap! Cheep-chap!"
"That doesn't sound like a fox," said the rabbit, listening with his two ears.
"No, it doesn't," admitted the porcupine, and he stuck his quills back again like pins in a cushion. "Perhaps it is the skillery-scalery alligator, and my quills would be of no use against him," he went on.
Then, all at once, before Uncle Wiggily could make his nose twinkle like a star of a frosty night more than two times, there was a rustling in the bushes, and out popped a poor, little white chickie—only she wasn't so very white now, for her feathers were all wet and muddy.
"Cheep-chap! Yip-yap!" cried the little chickie.
"Why, what in the world are you doing away off here?" asked Uncle Wiggily. "You poor little dear! Where is your mother?"
"Oh, me! Oh, my!" cried the little chickie. "I only wish I knew. I'm lost! I wandered away from my mamma, and my brothers, and sisters, and I'm lost in these woods. Oh chip! Oh chap! Oh yip! Oh yap!" Then she cried real hard and the tears washed some of the dirt off her white feathers.
"Don't cry," said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. "We'll help you find your mamma, won't we, Mr. Porcupine?"