“They certainly don’t sleep without them!” said the squirrel rather sharply.
“Look here!” replied the raccoon, rising and shaking himself, “should you like me to bite about two inches off your tail? It won’t take me a minute, and I would just as lief do it as not.”
Affairs were becoming rather serious, when suddenly the wood-pigeon appeared, and fluttered down with a gentle “Coo!” between the two friends, who certainly seemed anything but friendly.
“What are you two quarrelling about?” she asked. “How extremely silly you both are! But now make friends, and put on your very best manners, for we are going to have a visitor here in a few minutes. I am going to call Chucky and Miss Mary, and do you make everything tidy about the pool before she comes.” And off flew Pigeon Pretty in a great hurry.
“She?” said Cracker inquiringly, looking at Coon.
“She said ‘she’!” replied Coon, bestirring himself, and picking up the dead branches that had fallen on the smooth green moss-carpet.
“Perhaps it is that aunt of Chucky’s who has been making him a visit,” suggested the squirrel.
“Oh, well!” said the raccoon, stopping short in his work. “If Pigeon Pretty thinks I am going to put this place in order for a woodchuck’s aunt, she is very much mistaken, that’s all. I never heard of such—” But here he stopped, for a loud rustling in the underbrush announced that the visitor, whoever she might be, was close at hand.
The bushes separated, and to the utter astonishment of both Coon and Cracker, who should appear but the grandmother herself, escorted by Toto and Bruin, and attended also by the wood-pigeon and the parrot, who fluttered about her head with cries of pleasure.
Toto led the old lady to the mossy bank beside the pool, where she sat down, rather out of breath, and a little bewildered, but evidently much pleased at having accomplished such a feat.