was Mr. Chuck, and believed that those are best
helped who help themselves. So he kept studying and studying how he
could live through another cold spell, if it should come.

"'I haven't got as thick a fur coat as Mr. Mink or Mr. Otter or Mr.
Squirrel or some others, and I can't run around as fast as they can, so
of course I can't keep as warm,' said he to himself, as he sat taking a
sun-bath one day. 'I must find some other way of keeping warm. Now I
don't believe the cold can get very deep down in the ground, so if I
build me a house way down deep in the ground, it always will be
comfortable. Anyway, it never will be very cold. I believe that is a
good idea. I'll try it at once.'

"So without wasting any time, Mr. Chuck began to dig. He dug and he dug
and he dug. When his neighbors grew curious and asked questions, he
smiled good-naturedly and said that he was trying an experiment. When he
had made a long hall which went down so deep that he was quite sure that
Jack Frost could not get down there, he made a bedroom and put in it a
bed of soft grass. When it was finished, he was so pleased with it that
he retired to it every night as soon as the sun went down and didn't
come out again until morning.

"'Anyway, I won't freeze to death,' said he. Then he sighed as he
remembered how hungry, how terribly hungry he had been. 'Now if only I
can think of some way to get food enough to carry me through, I'll be
all right.'

"At first he thought of storing up food, but when he tried that, he soon
found that the tender green things on which he lived wouldn't keep. They
shriveled and dried, so that he couldn't eat them at all. He was still
trying to think of some plan when Old Mother Nature sent warning that
rough Brother North Wind and Jack Frost were coming again. Mr. Chuck's
heart sank. He thought of how soon all the tender green things would
disappear. Right then an idea was born in Mr. Chuck's head. He would eat
all he could while he could, and then he would go down into his bedroom
and sleep just as long as he could!

"So day after day he spent stuffing himself, and his neighbors called
him Mr. Greedy. But he didn't mind that. He kept right on eating, and of
course he grew fatter and fatter, so that at last he was so fat he could
hardly get about. The days grew cooler and cooler, and then Mr. Chuck
noticed that because he was so fat, he didn't feel the cold as he had
before. There came a morning at last when Mr. Chuck