“I suppose so, I suppose so,” grunted Great-grandfather Fieldmouse.
So on the third day, when Snoof Woodchuck climbed out into the air, all the fieldmice were assembled. He was very much complimented. He bowed pompously, this way and that—and oh, how funny he looked, as though the moths had been at him! “Hmm, hmm!” he began importantly. “As I told you when I predicted the weather on the next day after the first February moon——”
But he never got any further. For the mice simply squealed in surprise, “Why, that was the day we came for our charms of woodchuck fur. You were fast asleep!”
“You old bluffer,” jeered Doctor Muskrat, “we caught you napping this time!”
“Look at yourself!” squealed Nibble Rabbit, standing on his tallest toes to hop about. “See if you’re not mouse-eaten! You’re as naked as you were born—yah! I’m ashamed to look at you!” And the mice all echoed him.
And that woodchuck scuttled back into the very bottom of the hole and hid there until midnight. And then he went so far away that no one ever saw him again or even heard of him.
CHAPTER X
WHAT DOCTOR MUSKRAT THOUGHT ABOUT TRAPS
Quite a long while ago I promised to tell what Tommy Peele was doing in the Broad Field when he let Nibble Rabbit’s storm party out of the little cornstalk tent. Well, to begin with, he was looking for the tracks of the woodsfolk. But as long as the snow lay deep on the ground he didn’t find many.
For Doctor Muskrat and the fieldmice and Nibble Rabbit were about the only ones who stayed there. Doctor Muskrat was too clever to leave tracks where any one would see them. And the fieldmice had their tunnels far below the crust, so you never saw anything of them. And you’d have to creep around among the Pickery Things before you’d see many signs of Nibble Rabbit.
But the birds called very often to get a drink from the warm spring hidden among the bulrushes that was Doctor Muskrat’s front door. It was Chewee the Chickadee who brought news of the quail. “They have to go a long way in the deep woods every day to find enough seeds for so large a flock,” he said. “And they told me that I must leave every last weed head that pricked up above the snow in their thicket for Nibble Rabbit.”