GLAD time. It is the time when all the little people of the
Green Forest and the Green Meadows have got over the cares and
worries of bringing up families and teaching their children how
to look out for themselves. It is the season when food is
plentiful, and every one is fat and is, or ought to be, care
free. It is the season when Old Mother Nature intended all her
little people to be happy, to have nothing to worry them for the
little time before the coming of cold weather and the hard times
which cold weather always brings.

But instead of this, a grim, dark figure goes stalking over the
Green Meadows and through the Green Forest, and it is called the
Spirit of Fear. It peers into every hiding-place and wherever it
finds one of the little people it sends little cold chills over
him, little chills which jolly, round, bright Mr. Sun cannot
chase away, though he shine his brightest. All night as well as
all day the Spirit of Fear searches out the little people of the
Green Meadows and the Green Forest. It will not let them sleep.
It will not let them eat in peace. It drives them to seek
new hiding-places and then drives them out of those. It keeps
them ever ready to fly or run at the slightest sound.

Peter Rabbit was thinking of this as he sat at the edge of the
dear Old Briar-patch, looking over to the Green Forest. The Green
Forest was no longer just green; it was of many colors, for Old
Mother Nature had set Jack Frost to painting the leaves of the
maple-trees and the beech-trees, and the birch-trees and the
poplar-trees and the chestnut-trees, and he had done his work well.
Very, very lovely were the reds and yellows and browns against
the dark green of the pines and the spruces and the hemlocks.