“Little Chief was puzzling over this as he squatted on a rock taking a sun-bath.  The sun was very warm and comforting.  After a while the rock on which he sat grew almost hot.  Little Chief had brought along a couple of pieces of pea vine on which to lunch, but not being hungry he left them beside him on the rock.  By and by he happened to glance at them.  They had wilted and already they were beginning to dry.  An idea popped into his funny little head.

“‘It’s the sun that does it!’ he cried.

“Up he jumped and scampered away to cut some more and spread it out on the rocks.  Then he discovered that the pea vine which he spread in the sun dried as he wanted it to, while any that happened to be left in the shadow of a rock didn’t dry so well.  He had learned how to make hay.  He was the first hay-maker in the Great World.  He soon had more than enough for a bed, but he kept on making hay and storing it away just for fun.  Then came cold weather and all the green things died.  There was no food for Little Chief.  He hunted and hunted, but there was nothing.  Then because he was so hungry he began to nibble at his hay.  It tasted good, very good indeed.  It tasted almost as good as the fresh green things.  Little Chief’s heart gave a great leap.  He had food in plenty!  He had nothing to worry about, for his hay would last him until the green things came again, as come they would, he felt sure.

“And so it proved.  And that is how Little Chief the Pika learned to make hay while the sun shone in the days of plenty.  He taught his children and they taught their children, and Little Chief of today does it just as his great-great-ever-so-great-grand-daddy did.  I don’t see why you don’t do the same thing, Peter.  You would make me a great deal finer dinner if you did.”

“Perhaps that is the reason I don’t,” replied Peter with a grin.

[Illustration:  “Little Chief’s father taught him how to make hay.” Page 67.]

VI

WHERE GLUTTON THE WOLVERINE GOT HIS NAME

Glutton the Wolverine is a dweller in the depths of the Great Forests of the Far North, and it is doubtful if Peter Rabbit would ever have known that there is such a person but for his acquaintance with Honker the Goose, who spends his summers in the Far North, but each spring and fall stops over for a day or two in a little pond in the Green Forest, a pond Peter often visits.  This acquaintance with Honker and Peter’s everlasting curiosity have resulted in many strange stories.  At least they have seemed strange to Peter because they have been about furred and feathered people whom Peter has never seen.  And one of the strangest of these is the story of how Glutton the Wolverine got his name.

Of course you know what a glutton is.  It is one who is very, very, very greedy and eats and eats as if eating were the only thing in life worth while.  It is one who is all the time thinking of his stomach.  No one likes to be called a glutton.  So when Honker the Goose happened to mention Glutton, it caused Peter to prick up his ears at once.