OLD GRANNY FOX LOSES HER DIGNITY


Unc' Billy Possum had passed the word along to Jimmy Skunk, Peter
Rabbit, and Prickly Porky that old Granny Fox would be on hand at
sun-up to see for herself the strange creature which had frightened
Reddy Fox at the foot of the hill where Prickly Porky lives. How did
Unc' Billy know? Well, he just guessed. He is quite as shrewd and
clever as Granny Fox herself, and when he told her that the only time
the strange creature everybody was talking about was seen was at
sun-up, he guessed by the very way she sniffed and pretended not to
believe it at all that she would visit Prickly Porky's hill the next
morning.

"The ol' lady suspects that there is some trick, and we-uns have got
to be very careful," warned Unc' Billy, as he and his three friends
put their heads together in the early evening. "She is done bound to
come snooping around before sun-up," he continued, "and we-uns must be
out of sight, all excepting Brer Porky. She'll come just the way she
did this afternoon,--from back of the hill instead of along the
holler."

Unc' Billy was quite right. Old Granny Fox felt very sure that some
one was playing tricks, so she didn't wait until jolly, round, red Mr.
Sun was out of bed. She was at the top of the hill where Prickly Porky
lives a full hour before sun-up, and there she sat down to wait. She
couldn't see or hear anything in the least suspicious. You see, Unc'
Billy Possum was quite out of sight, as he sat in the thickest part of
a hemlock-tree, and Peter Rabbit was sitting perfectly still in a