The trouble with a great many people is that they remember this too
late. Reddy Fox is one of these. Reddy is smart and sly and clever in
some ways, but he hasn't learned yet to guard his tongue, and half the
trouble he gets into is because of that unruly member. You see it is a
boastful tongue and an untruthful tongue and that is the worst
combination for making trouble that I know of. It has landed him in
all kinds of scrapes in the past, and here he was in another, all on
account of that tongue.

Jolly, round, red Mr. Sun had kicked his rosy blankets off and was
smiling down on the Great World as he began his daily climb up in the
blue, blue sky. The Jolly Little Sunbeams were already dancing through
the Green Forest, chasing out the Black Shadows, and Reddy knew that
it was high time for him to be over by the hill where Prickly Porky
the Porcupine lives. With lagging steps he sneaked along from tree to
tree, peering out from behind each anxiously, afraid to go on, and
still more afraid not to, for fear that he would be called a coward.

He had almost reached the foot of the hill without seeing anything out
of the usual and without any signs of Unc' Billy Possum. He was just
beginning to hope that Unc' Billy wasn't there, as he had said he
would be, when a voice right over his head said:

"Ah cert'nly am glad to see that yo' are as good as your word, Brer
Fox, fo' we need some one brave like yo' to find out what this strange
creature is that has been chasing we-uns."

Reddy looked up with a sickly grin. There sat Unc' Billy Possum in a
pine tree right over his head. He knew now that there was no backing