gerly.

Granny grinned. "I'll try it first and tell you afterwards," said she.
"I believe Farmer Brown's boy closes the henhouse up just before jolly,
round, red Mr. Sun goes to bed behind the Purple Hills, doesn't he?"

Reddy nodded. Many times from a safe hiding-place he had hungrily
watched Farmer Brown's boy shut the biddies up. It was always just
before the Black Shadows began to creep out from their hiding-places.

"I thought so," said Granny. The truth is, she KNEW so. There was
nothing about that henhouse and what went on there that Granny didn't
know quite as well as Reddy. "You stay right here this afternoon until I
return. I'll see what I can do."

"Let me go along," begged Reddy.

"No," replied Granny in such a decided tone that Reddy knew it would be
of no use to tease. "Sometimes two can do what one cannot do alone, and
sometimes one can do what two might spoil. Now we may as well take a nap
until it is time for Mr. Sun to go to bed. Just you leave it to your old
Granny to take care of the first of those ifs. For the other one we'll
have to trust to luck, but you know we are lucky sometimes."

With this Granny curled up for a nap, and having nothing better to do,
Reddy followed her example.

CHAPTER XXIII: Farmer Brown's Boy Forgets To Close The Gate

How easy 't is to just forget
Until, alas, it is too late.
The most methodical of folks
Sometimes forget to shut the gate.
--Old Granny Fox.

Farmer Brown's Boy is not usually the forgetful kind. He is pretty good
about not forgetting. But Farmer Brown's boy isn't perfect by any means.
He does forget sometimes, and he is careless sometimes. He would be
a funny kind of boy otherwise. But take it day in and day out, he is
pretty thoughtful and careful.

The care of the hens is one of Farmer Brown's boy's duties. It is one of
those duties which most of the time is a pleasure. He likes the biddies,
and he likes to take care of them. Every morning one of the first things
he does is to feed them and open the henhouse so that they can run in
the henyard if they want to. Every night he goes out just before dark,
collects the eggs and locks the henhouse so that no harm can come to the
biddies while they are asleep on their roosts. After the big snowstorm
he had shovelled a place in the henyard where the hens could come out
and exercise and get a sun-bath when they wanted to, and in the very
warmest part of the clay they would do this.