of me? I happen to know that you've been
hunting high and low this past hour, and if that meddling Jay hadn't
run across me by accident, you'd still be scurrying around as if I
were the best friend you had in the world.'

"'That's just what I count you are, Jimmy,' and I nestled as near his
nose as I could without filling myself full of quills. That seemed to
quiet him down a little and I went on to explain about Mr. Turtle;
telling Jimmy how sick the old fellow looked. I expected every minute
that he'd give it to me hard for trying to stuff him with any such
yarn as that old Slowly had the toothache, but, do you know, he never
thought about Mr. Turtle's not having teeth, and asked, as if he'd got
real interested in the story:

"'What does he think I can do? I'm no dentist's shop.'

"When I told him that Slowly believed the pain was caused by his
getting a piece of snail's shell in his teeth, and that he could fix
himself up all right if he had a hedgehog quill for a toothpick, that
foolish Jimmy swallowed the story, shell and all.

"'I'm allowing that I'm the only one of the wood folks who really
amounts to anything in the way of usefulness,' he said, grinning like
a jack o' lantern, and shaking his quills till I had to get out in the
open for fear some of them would strike me. 'If I can help old Mr.
Turtle, of course I must do it; but you wait till the president of
your blooming old club gets into trouble that nobody but me can pull
him out of, and see how long it'll be before I so much as lift a paw!
I wouldn't give that beggar Jim Crow one of my quills, not if he was
starving to death!'

"I wanted to ask Jimmy how much good he thought one of his quills
would do to a crow who was starving to death; but held my tongue,
because I didn't want to stir him up while he was in such a good
humor, and if I poked the least little bit of fun at him he might
decide that he wouldn't go to Mr. Turtle, in which case I'd miss the
fun I was counting on.

"Well, Jimmy strutted out from under the fir bushes, shaking himself
to look big, and walking as if he thought he was the only thing in the
big woods, while I hipperty-hopped at his side, but taking mighty good
care not to get so near that there was any danger of being scratched.
You don't want to think that he was feeling any too friendly with me,
even though we two were getting along so peaceably and every now and
then he'd stop to threaten what he was going to do because I