XIX

BOBBY COON MAKES A DISCOVERY

Bobby Coon had overslept.  Usually Bobby is astir shortly after jolly, round, red Mr. Sun has gone to bed behind the Purple Hills.  But Bobby is very irregular in his habits.  He is very fond of traveling about in the night, is Bobby Coon, and when he does that, he sleeps the greater part of the day.  But once in a while he takes a notion to travel about by daylight, and when he does that, why of course he has to sleep part of the night, anyway.  Bobby Coon is a very lucky chap, very lucky indeed, for he can see in the dark, and yet, unlike Hooty the Owl, he has no trouble in seeing in the broad daylight as well.

This night Bobby Coon had overslept because he had not gone to bed until the middle of the day.  He had been prowling about and getting into mischief all of the night before and had not started for home until jolly, round Mr. Sun was smiling down from right overhead.  By this time Bobby Coon had sticks in his eyes.  He was so sleepy that it seemed to him that he never, never could get home.  He was stumbling along through the Green Forest when he came to a hollow log.  What do you think he did?  Why, he crawled in there, and in two minutes was fast asleep, just as comfortable as if he had been in his own hollow tree.

There Bobby slept all the rest of the day and until long after Mr. Sun had pulled on his rosy nightcap.  Perhaps he would have slept there all night, if he hadn’t been waked up.  It was the cry of “Thief! thief! thief!” that waked him.  It seemed to come from right over his head.

“Sammy Jay ought to be ashamed of himself, waking honest people like this!” muttered Bobby Coon, as he yawned and stretched.  At first he couldn’t think where he was.  Then he remembered.  He was just getting ready to crawl out of the hollow log, when he heard something which made him stop and try to sit up so suddenly that he bumped his head.  What he heard was the voice of Unc’ Billy Possum, and he knew by the sound that Unc’ Billy was sitting on the very log in which he himself was hiding.

“This is the greatest joke that ever was!” said Unc’ Billy.  “Pretty soon nobody on the Green Meadows or in the Green Forest will speak to anybody else excepting me.  Yo’ cert’nly have got all your ol’ tricks with yo’.”

“Yes,” replied a voice which Bobby Coon had never heard before, but which he knew right away must belong to some one who had come from way down South where Unc’ Billy Possum and Ol’ Mistah Buzzard had come from.  “Yes,” said the voice, “Ah done got all mah ol’ tricks and some more.  But it’s easy, Unc’ Billy, it’s easy to fool your new friends, because Ah reckon they never have been fooled this way before.  Don’ yo’ think it is most time to stop?  Ah don’t want to show mahself in daylight.  Besides, if Ah’m found out, nobody ain’t gwine to have anything to do with me.”