So the merry lot went to this hollow one calm evening and Mother Fox made them lie still in the grass.  Presently a faint squeak showed that the game was astir.  Vix rose up and went on tip-toe into the grass—­not crouching, but as high as she could stand, sometimes on her hind legs so as to get a better view.  The runs that the mice follow are hidden under the grass tangle, and the only way to know the whereabouts of a mouse is by seeing the slight shaking of the grass, which is the reason why mice are hunted only on calm days.

And the trick is to locate the mouse and seize him first and see him afterward.  Vix soon made a spring, and in the middle of the bunch of dead grass that she grabbed was a field-mouse squeaking his last squeak.

He was soon gobbled, and the four awkward little foxes tried to do the same as their mother, and when at length the eldest for the first time in his life caught game, he quivered with excitement and ground his pearly little milk-teeth into the mouse with a rush of inborn savageness that must have surprised even himself.

Another home lesson was on the red-squirrel.  One of these noisy, vulgar creatures, lived close by and used to waste part of each day scolding the foxes, from some safe perch.  The cubs made many vain attempts to catch him as he ran across their glade from one tree to another, or spluttered and scolded at them a foot or so out of reach.  But old Vixen was up in natural history—­she knew squirrel nature and took the case in hand when the proper time came.  She hid the children and lay down flat in the middle of the open glade.  The saucy low-minded squirrel came and scolded as usual.  But she moved no hair.  He came nearer and at last right overhead to chatter: 

“You brute you, you brute you.”

But Vix lay as dead.  This was very perplexing, so the squirrel came down the trunk and peeping about made a nervous dash across the grass, to another tree, again to scold from a safe perch.

“You brute you, you useless brute, scarrr-scarrrrr.”

But flat and lifeless on the grass lay Vix.  This was most tantalizing to the squirrel.  He was naturally curious and disposed to be venturesome, so again he came to the ground and skurried across the glade nearer than before.

Still as death lay Vix, “surely she was dead.”  And the little foxes began to wonder if their mother wasn’t asleep.

But the squirrel was working himself into a little craze of foolhardy curiosity.  He had dropped a piece of bark on Vix’s head; he had used up his list of bad words, and he had done it all over again, without getting a sign of life.  So after a couple more dashes across the glade he ventured within a few feet of the really watchful Vix, who sprang to her feet and pinned him in a twinkling.

“And the little ones picked the bones e-oh.”  Thus the rudiments of their education were laid, and afterward, as they grew stronger, they were taken farther afield to begin the higher branches of trailing and scenting.