something fo' dinner, but 'pears to me he's plumb forgot it already," she
muttered. "Just look at him with his head up in the air like he thought
dinner fo' we uns would drap right down to him out o' the sky! If he's
aiming to find a bird's nest with eggs in it this time o' year, he sho'ly
am plumb foolish in his haid. No, Sah! That onery Possum has clean
fo'gotten what Ah just done tole him, and if we uns am going to have any
dinner, Ah cert'nly have got to flax 'round right smart spry mahself!"

Old Mrs. Possum chased the eight little Possums into the house and warned
them not to so much as put their heads outside the door while she was gone.
Then she started out to hunt for their dinner, still muttering as she went.

Old Mrs. Possum was quite right. Unc' Billy had forgotten all about that
dinner. You see he had something else on his mind. While he had been
playing with his children, he had thought that he heard a voice way off in
the distance, and it had sounded very, very much like the voice of an old
friend from way down South in "Ol' Virginny." He had listened and listened
but didn't hear it again, and yet he was sure he had heard it that once.
The very thought that that old friend of his might be somewhere in the
Green Forest excited Unc' Billy so that it fairly made him homesick. He
just _had_ to go look for him.

So all the rest of that day Unc' Billy Possum walked and walked through the
Green Forest, peering up in the tree-tops and looking into the bushes until
his neck ached. But nowhere did he catch a glimpse of his old friend. The
longer he looked, the more excited he grew.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Jimmy Skunk, meeting Unc' Billy on the
Crooked Little Path near the top of the hill.