And be quite positive you're right,

   Don't let your temper get away;

    And try at least to be polite.

     —Old Granny Fox.

Sammy Jay hurried through the Green Forest, chuckling¹ as he flew. Sammy was brimming over with the news he had to tell,—how Old Granny Fox had been caught napping by Farmer Brown's boy. Sammy wouldn't have believed it if any one had told him. No, Sir, he wouldn't. But he had seen it with his own eyes, and it tickled² him almost to pieces to think that Old Granny Fox, whom everybody thought so sly and clever and smart, had been caught actually asleep by the very one of whom she was most afraid, but at whom she always had turned up her nose.

 

Presently Sammy spied Reddy Fox trotting³ along the Lone⁴ Little Path. Reddy was forever boasting of how smart Granny Fox was. He had boasted of it so much that everybody was sick of hearing him. When he saw Reddy trotting along the Lone Little Path, Sammy chuckled⁵ harder than ever. He hid in a thick hemlock-tree and as Reddy passed he shouted:

 

 “Had I such a stupid old Granny

    As some folks who think they are smart,

  I never would boast of my Granny,

    But live by myself quite apart!”

 

Reddy looked up angrily. He couldn't see Sammy Jay, but he knew Sammy's voice. There is no mistaking that. Everybody knows the voice of Sammy Jay. Of course it was foolish, very foolish of Reddy to be angry, and still more foolish to show that he was angry. Had he stopped a minute to think, he would have known that Sammy was saying such a mean, provoking thing just to make him angry, and that the angrier he became the better pleased Sammy Jay would be. But like a great many people, Reddy allowed his temper to get the better of his common sense.

 

“Who says Granny Fox is stupid?” he snarled⁶.

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