e
subject. "How would you like to eat a dinner of Bowser the Hound's?" she
asked.

CHAPTER XVII: Granny Fox Promises Reddy Bowser's Dinner

To give her children what each needs
To get the most from life he can,
To work and play and live his best,
Is wise Old Mother Nature's plan.
--Old Granny Fox.

Old Granny Fox asked Reddy how he would like to eat a dinner of Bowser
the Hound's, Reddy looked at her sharply to see if she were joking
or really meant what she said. Granny looked so sober and so much in
earnest that Reddy decided she couldn't be joking, even though it did
sound that way.

"I certainly would like it, Granny. Yes, indeed, I certainly would like
it," said he. "You--you don't suppose he will give us one, do you?"

Granny chuckled. "No, Reddy," said she. "Bowser isn't so generous as all
that, especially to Foxes. He isn't going to give us that dinner; we are
going to take it away from him. Yes, Sir, we just naturally are going to
take it away from, him."

Reddy didn't for the life of him see how it could be possible to take
a dinner away from Bowser the Hound. That seemed to him almost as
impossible as it was for him to climb or fly or dive. But he had great
faith in Granny's cleverness. He remembered how she had so nearly caught
Quacker the Duck. He knew that all the time he had been away trying to
find something for them to eat, old Granny Fox had been doing more than
just rest her tired old bones. He knew that not for one single minute
had her sharp wits been idle. He knew that all that time she had been
studying and studying to find some way by which they could get something
to eat. So great was his faith in Granny just then that if she had told
him she would get him a slice of the moon he would have believed her.

"If you say we can take a dinner away from Bowser the Hound, I suppose
we can," said Reddy, "though I don't see how. But if we can, let's do
it right away. I'm hungry enough to dare almost anything for the sake of
something to put in my stomach. It is so empty that little bit of fish
we divided is shaking around as if it were lost. Gracious, I could eat
a million fish the size of that one! Have you thought of Fanner Brown's
hens, Granny?"

"Of course, Reddy! Of course! What a silly question!" replied Granny.
"We may have to come to them yet."

"I wish I was at them right now," interrupted Reddy with a sigh.

"But you know what I have told you," went on Granny.