The hedgehog did not move; there was no need.  It was for the cat to make the next move—­if she chose.  He did not care.  All things were one to him, and all the views which he presented to the world were points, a cheval-de-frise, a coiled ball of barbed wire, a living Gibraltar, what you will, but, anyway, practically impregnable; and the beggar knew it.  “He who believeth doth not make haste”—­that seemed to be his motto, and he had, by the same token, a fine facility for withstanding a siege.

He felt the cat, that cat who did not know hedgehogs, pat him tentatively.  Then he heard her swearing softly and tensely at the painful result.  She did not pat again—­at least, only once, and, in spite of care, that hurt her worse than ever.  Then she began growling, low and beastily—­for all the cat tribe have a horrible growl; you may have noticed it.  Perhaps the hedgehog smiled.  I don’t know.  He knew that growl, anyhow; had heard it before—­the anger of utter exasperation.  He was an exasperating brute, too, for he never said anything, only shut himself up, and let others do the arguing, if they were fools enough to do so.

Suddenly he heard the growl stop.  Followed a tense pause, during which he tightened his back-muscles under his spines, and tucked himself in, to meet any coming shock, more tightly than ever.  Followed the pause a short warning hiss, jerked out almost in fright, it seemed—­that cat’s hiss that is only a bluff, and meant to imitate a snake—­a sudden explosion of snarls, and a thud.  A fractional silence, then a perfect boil-over of snarls, and thud upon thud.

Now, our friend hedgehog was an old hand, and he had heard many and curious sounds take place outside himself, so to speak; but, all the same, he was just tickled to death to know what, in claws and whiskers, was happening out there in the leering moonlight now; so much so, indeed, that at last he risked it, and took a furtive peep out of a chink in himself, as it were.  And what he saw might have amazed him, if he had not been a hedgehog and scarcely ever amazed at anything.  He just got a snapshot view of the cat’s fine ringed tail whirling round and round as she balanced herself on the swerve, vanishing into the ghostly moonlight haze of the night; and in front of him, close beside him, squatting, stare-eyed and phlegmatic, he saw the form of a big, gaunt, old doe-rabbit.  And I think he knew what had happened.  He seemed to, anyway, and remained rolled up.

Rabbits are thoughtless, headstrong, headlong, hopeless, helpless cowards as a race and a rule.  “The heart of a rabbit,” they say in France, speaking of a coward.  But all races and rules have exceptions.  Occasionally the exceptions are old buck-rabbits, who know a thing or two; but more often they are old doe-rabbits with young.  And, mark you, from the point of view of those wild-folk, there may be easier rough handfuls to tackle than old doe-rabbits with young.