Granny Fox Has A Bad Dream
Nothing ever simply happens;
Bear that point in mind.
If you look long and hard enough
A cause you’ll always find.
—_Old Granny Fox_.
Old Granny Fox was dreaming. Yes, Sir, she was dreaming. There she lay,
curled up on the sunny little knoll on the edge of the Green Forest,
fast asleep and dreaming. It was a very pleasant and very comfortable
place indeed. You see, jolly, round, bright Mr. Sun poured his warmest
rays right down there from the blue, blue sky. When Old Granny Fox was
tired, she often slipped over there for a short nap and sun-bath even
in winter. She was quite sure that no one knew anything about it. It
was one of her secrets.
This morning Old Granny Fox was very tired, unusually so. In the first
place she had been out hunting all night. Then, before she could reach
home, Bowser the Hound had found her tracks and started to follow them.
Of course, it wouldn’t have done to go home then. It wouldn’t have done
at all. Bowser would have followed her straight there and so found out
where she lived. So she had led Bowser far away across the Green
Meadows and through the Green Forest and finally played one of her
smart tricks which had so mixed her tracks that Bowser could no longer
follow them. While he had sniffed and snuffed and snuffed and sniffed
with that wonderful nose of his, trying to find out where she had gone,
Old Granny Fox had trotted straight to the sunny knoll and there curled
up to rest. Right away she fell asleep.
Now Old Granny Fox, like most of the other little people of the Green
Forest and the Green Meadows, sleeps with her ears wide open. Her eyes
may be closed, but not her ears. Those are always on guard, even when
she is asleep, and at the least sound open fly her eyes, and she is
ready to run. If it were not for the way her sharp ears keep guard, she
wouldn’t dare take naps in the open right in broad daylight. If you
ever want to catch a Fox asleep, you mustn’t make the teeniest,
weeniest noise. Just remember that.
Now Old Granny Fox had no sooner closed her eyes than she began to
dream. At first it was a very pleasant dream, the pleasantest dream a
Fox can have. It was of a chicken dinner, all the chicken she could
eat. Granny certainly enjoyed that dream. It made her smack her lips
quite as if it were a real and not a dream dinner she was enjoying.
But presently the dream changed and became a bad dream. Yes, indeed, it
became a bad dream. It was as bad as at first it had been good. It
seemed to Granny that Bowser the Hound had become very smart, smarter
than she had ever known him to be before. Do what she would, she
couldn’t fool him. Not one of all the tricks she knew, and she knew a
great many, fooled him at all. They didn’t puzzle him long enough for
her to get her breath.
Bowser kept getting nearer and nearer and nearer, all in the dream, you
know, until it seemed as if his great voice sounded right at her very
heels. She was so tired that it seemed to her that she couldn’t run
another step. It was a very, very real dream. You know dreams sometimes
do seem very real indeed. This was the way it was with the bad dream of
Old Granny Fox. It seemed to her that she could feel the breath of
Bowser the Hound and that his great jaws were just going to close on
her and shake her to death.
“Oh! Oh!” cried Granny and waked herself up. Her eyes flew open. Then
she gave a great sigh of relief as she realized that her terrible
fright was only a bad dream and that she was curled up right on the
dear, familiar, old, sunny knoll and not running for her life at all.
Old Granny Fox smiled to think what a fright she had had and
then,—well, she didn’t know whether she was really awake or still
dreaming! No, Sir, she didn’t. For a full minute she couldn’t be sure
whether what she saw was real or part of that dreadful dream. You see,
she was staring into the face of Farmer Brown’s boy and the muzzle of
his dreadful gun!
For just a few seconds she didn’t move. She couldn’t. She was too
frightened to move. Then she knew what she saw was real and not a dream
at all. There wasn’t the least bit of doubt about it. That was Farmer
Brown’s boy, and that was his dreadful gun! All in a flash she knew
that Farmer Brown’s boy must have been hiding behind those pine boughs.
Poor Old Granny Fox! For once in her life she had been caught napping.
She hadn’t the least hope in the world. Farmer Brown’s boy had only to
fire that dreadful gun, and that would be the end of her. She knew it.