"You just wait, Miss," cried Little White Fox one day. "When summer comes, I'll get you!"
"You will, will you!" replied Miss Ptarmigan. "How will you do it?"
"Why, in the summer the snow will be gone, and the ground will be all brown. Then I will be able to find you anywhere!" Little White Fox gave a hop, skip and jump that ended in a somersault, so tickled was he with his own smartness.
"Oh, indeed!" said Miss Ptarmigan, looking very wise and mysterious.
That was all she said, but Little White Fox wasn't fussed. He hadn't lain curled up on the grass mat in his home thinking about it night after night for nothing.
One day when the snow was nearly all gone, Little Miss Ptarmigan suddenly disappeared. Little White Fox didn't believe she was dead. He remembered how he had been fooled by Tdariuk, and he remembered, too, how she had looked when he talked about catching her. Also, he remembered how he had found out the truth about Tdariuk. Therefore, being a wise youngster, as I have said, he didn't say a word about it to his mother. He just went quietly about, looking, looking everywhere for Miss Ptarmigan.
In the meantime, Miss Ptarmigan had been making trouble for herself. Silly old Mrs. White Owl had been telling her all winter how very well white suited her complexion. And now summer had come, and Mother Ptarmigan had forbidden her to go outdoors at all till her new brown summer suit was finished. Miss Ptarmigan hated indoors, and she couldn't understand what difference her dress made, anyway. But she never thought of disobeying till one fine, warm day when her mother was away from home, Little Miss Ptarmigan grew very lonesome.
"I want to go out in the sunshine," she kept saying to herself. "There can't be a bit of harm in it. I am sure I would see Old Mrs. White Owl, and she would say something nice about my white dress."
Down at the foot of the mountain was some one else, a some one who didn't think much about the sunshine and the flowers. It was Master Black Fox. He was thinking of his sausage grinder. It hadn't been used much of late, and he was afraid it might get lazy. "A plump chub of a Ptarmigan would grind nicely," he said to himself, smacking his lips, "but they all wear brown dresses these days, and one cannot tell them from the weeds and grass."
Just then his eyes opened wide. "Can I believe it?" he whispered. "Is that one of them going down the mountain this minute—and with a white dress on? Yes, sir, it is!"