"What is a louis d'or?" cried three of my children; and "What is
brandy?" asked the other four.

"I smell valerian," said I; on which they poked out their seven
noses, and I ran at them with my spines, for a father who is not an
Encyclopædia on all fours must adopt _some_ method of checking the
inquisitiveness of the young.

One more quotation must be made from the end of the story, where
Father Hedgehog gives a list of the fates that befell his children:

Number one came to a sad end. What on the face of the wood made him
think of pheasants' eggs I cannot conceive. I'm sure I never said
anything about them! It was whilst he was scrambling along the edge
of the covert, that he met the Fox, and very properly rolled
himself into a ball. The Fox's nose was as long as his own, and he
rolled my poor son over and over with it, till he rolled him into
the stream. The young urchins swim like fishes, but just as he was
scrambling to shore, the Fox caught him by the waistcoat and killed
him. I do hate slyness!

It seems scarcely conceivable that any one can sympathize sufficiently
with a Hedgehog as to place himself in the latter's position, and
share its paternal anxieties,--but I think Julie was able to do so,
or, at any rate, her translations of the Hedgepig's whines were so
_ben trovati_, they may well stand until some better interpreter of
the languages of the brute creation rises up amongst us. As another
instance of her breadth of sympathy with beasts, let us turn to "A
Week Spent in a Glass Pond" (which also came out in _Aunt Judy's