and laid it down upon the grass. Then he pulled off his necktie and
unbuttoned his collar. Just because he was going to dig in the ground
there was no reason why he should get his clothes dirty.

After that Sandy Chipmunk set to work. And you should have seen how he
made the earth fly. When night came and he had to stop working there was
a big heap of dirt beneath the beech trees, to show how busy Sandy had
been. There was a big hole in the pasture, too. But it was nothing at
all, compared with the hole Sandy had dug by the time he had finished
his house.

Every morning Sandy Chipmunk came back to the grove of beech trees to
work upon his new house. And it was not many days before his burrow was
so deep that when winter came the ground about his chamber would not
freeze. It was what Farmer Green would have called "below frost-line."

You must not think it was an easy matter for Sandy Chipmunk to dig a
home. You must remember that somehow he had to bring the dirt out of his
tunnel to the top of the ground. And he did that by _pushing it ahead of
him with his nose_.

You may laugh when you hear that. But for Sandy Chipmunk it was no
laughing matter. If _he_ had laughed, just as likely as not he would have
found his mouth full of dirt. And you can understand that that wouldn't
have been very pleasant.

As it was, his face was very dirty. But he never went back to his
mother's house until he had washed it carefully, just as a cat washes her
face.