Then there was a still different whistle. It meant “Danger very near;
lie low!” When they heard that, they flattened themselves right down in
the grass just wherever they happened to be, and held their breath and
didn't move until Johnny signaled that they might. Of course, there
never was any real danger. Johnny was just teaching them, so that when
danger did come, as it surely would, sooner or later, they would know
just what to do.
It surely was a funny little school, and sometimes Sammy Jay had hard
work to keep from laughing right out.
XXIV. SAMMY JAY PROVES THAT HE IS NOT ALL BAD
Sammy Jay hadn't had so much fun for a long time as he found in watching
the funny little school in Farmer Brown's old orchard, where Johnny
Chuck was teaching his three baby Chucks the things that every little
Chuck must learn, if he would grow up into a big Chuck. When they had
learned to mind without waiting to ask why, and had learned the signals
which told them just what to do when danger was near, Johnny began to
lead them farther and farther away from home.
He took them up along the old stone wall and showed them how to find
safe hiding-places among the stones. Then he took them off a little way
and suddenly gave the danger signal. It was funny, very funny indeed to
see the three little Chucks scamper for the old stone wall and crawl out
of sight.
The first time, two of them tried to squeeze into the same hole
together, and each was in such a hurry that he wouldn't let the other
go first. Then both lost their tempers and they began to fight about it,
quite forgetting that if there was really any danger near, they surely
would come to harm. Such a scolding as Johnny Chuck did give those two
little Chucks! Then he made them try it all over again.
Once he found a foot print which Reddy Fox had made in some soft earth
during the night, and made each little Chuck smell of it, while he told
them all about Reddy and old Granny Fox and how smart and sly they were
and how very, very fond they were of tender young Chucks for dinner.
The three little Chucks shivered when they smelled of Reddy's track, and
the hair along their backs stood up in a way that was very funny to see.
Then Johnny Chuck took them over to the edge of the old orchard, where
they could peep out over the Green Meadows. He pointed out old Whitetail
the Marshhawk, sailing back and forth over the meadows, and told them
how once, when he was a little Chuck and had run away from home, old
Whitetail had nearly caught him. He told them about Farmer Brown's boy
and about Bowser the Hound and a great many other things that little
Chucks should learn about.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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