And the fox ran, too, only he had stepped on a piece of glass and cut his foot and couldn’t run very fast.  He was the same fox who lighted the firecracker in Dr. Pigg’s house, and I’m glad to say that he didn’t catch Buddy or Brighteyes, for they ran faster than the fox did.

Well, they hurried on for quite a distance further, and all at once, just as they were getting tired, and when they knew the fox had stopped chasing them, they happened to look down on the path, and what should they see but a white box; yes, indeed, a white box, tied with pink string.

“Oh, I wonder what can be in there?” asked Brighteyes.

“I don’t know, but I’ll go see,” said Buddy.

“Oh, no, don’t go too close,” begged his sister.  “It might be a trap, or perhaps the bad fox is hidden inside it.”

“It’s too small for a fox to get in,” declared the boy guinea pig.  “I’ll take a smell, anyhow.”

So he crept slowly, slowly, slowly up to the white box, and sniffed, and sniffed and sniffed.

“Oh!  Ah!  Um!  La-la!  Um!  Um!” exclaimed Buddy Pigg, and he laid down the packages of candy, nuts, cakes and other things he had carried home from the Littletails’ party, so that he might smell the better.

“What is it?” asked Brighteyes Pigg.  “What’s in the box?”

“I don’t know,” replied her brother, “but whatever it is, it smells the nicest of anything I ever smelled.  It’s just like when mamma bakes a ginger cake in the oven.  I’m going to open it and see.”

So, with his sharp teeth, Buddy loosened the pink string around the box, and off came the cover.  Then, what do you suppose was in the box?  Why, a whole lot of peanut candy, all nice and fresh, shining, golden brown, with just enough peanuts in, and not a bit more, really and truly!

“Oh!  Oh!  Oh!” cried Brighteyes in delight, as she saw it.  “Peanut candy, Buddy!  If there’s anything I love it’s peanut candy!  Some good fairy must have left this for us.  Come on, we’ll take it over here, under a bush, where the bad fox won’t see us, and we’ll eat some of it, and save some to take home.  Oh, how lovely!”

“I don’t think I care for peanut candy very much,” said Buddy.  “When I smelled it I thought it was going to be chocolate caramels.”

“Don’t you want any?” asked Brighteyes.

“No,” answered her brother, “but I’ll help you carry it into the bushes.  I’ll eat some of the things we brought from the party.  I’m getting hungry again.”

So he and Brighteyes carried the box of peanut candy into the bushes, and the little girl guinea pig began to eat the sweet stuff.

Well, she had eaten almost all of it up, before she thought, because it tasted so good, when all of a sudden, who should come along the path in the woods, but a little girl.  Yes, a little girl in a red dress, and she was crying as hard as she could cry, that little girl was.

“Oh, dear!” she sobbed, “I have lost my box of peanut candy, that I bought in the store, and I can’t find it, and I’m so miserable!  Nobody in the world is so miserable as I am.  Oh, dear!  Boo!  Hoo!”