- Old Granny Fox.

We all know that, yet most of us are just foolish enough to make
such a wish now and then. I guess you have done it. I know I have.
Peter Rabbit has done it often and then laughed at himself afterwards.
I suspect that even shrewd, clever old Granny Fox has been guilty of
it more than once. So it is not surprising that Reddy Fox, terribly
hungry as he was, should do a little foolish wishing.

When he left home to go to the Old Pasture, in the hope that he would
be able to find something to eat there, he started off bravely. It was
cold, very cold indeed, but his fur coat kept him warm as long as he
was moving. The Green Meadows were glistening white with snow. All the
world, at least all that part of it with which Reddy was acquainted,
was white. It was beautiful, very beautiful, as millions of sparkles
flashed in the sun. But Reddy had no thought for beauty; the only
thought he had room for was to get something to put in the empty
stomachs of himself and Granny Fox.

Jack Frost had hardened the snow so that Reddy no longer had to wade
through it. He could run on the crust now without breaking through.
This made it much easier, so he trotted along swiftly. He had
intended to go straight to the Old Pasture, but there suddenly popped
into his head a memory of the shelter down in a far corner of
the Old Orchard which Farmer Brown's boy had built for Bob White.
Probably the Bob White family were there now, and he might surprise
them. He would go there first.

Reddy stopped and looked carefully to make sure that Farmer Brown's
boy and Bowser the Hound were nowhere in sight. Then he ran swiftly