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Updated: May 12, 2025
Apparently, he had not. He was still sitting there, regarding her unpleasantly with his one small eye. "Ye needn't think ye're agoin to git off, jest because I made a leetle mistake like that!" muttered Mrs. Gammit, shutting her teeth with a snap, and cocking the gun as she raised it once more to her shoulder.
Shoo!" she cried, snatching off her nightcap and flapping it at them frantically. But the animals were too busy to even look up at her. The only sign they gave of having heard her was to raise their quills straight on end so that their size apparently doubled itself all at once. Mrs. Gammit felt herself wronged.
And she had also a pitchfork "layin' handy," wherewith to push the enemy down in case he should resent her attack and climb up to expostulate. Mrs. Gammit had not time to grow sleepy, or even impatient, so early did the bear arrive. The white pig, disturbed and puzzled by the unwonted goings-on above his head, had refused to go to bed.
But onc't in a while ye'll come across't one that's as sly as a weasel." "Oh, 'tain't none o' them!" said Mrs. Gammit, in a tone which conveyed a poor opinion of her host's sagacity and woodcraft. "I've suspicioned the weasels, an' the foxes, an' the woodchucks, but hain't found a sign o' any one of 'em round the place. An' as fer skunks well, I reckon, I've got a nose on my face."
After this he had grown bolder though always under cover of night. He had sampled everything in the garden the abundance of his foot-prints convincing Mrs. Gammit that there was also an abundance of bears. From the garden, at length, he had ventured to the yard and the barn.
Meanwhile the porcupines, with their noses to the ground and their eyes covered, had been escaping the insidious attack of the pepper. But at last it reached them. Mrs. Gammit saw a curious shiver pass over the array of quills. Now it was contrary to all the most rigid laws of the porcupine kind to uncoil themselves in the face of danger.
He would not presume too quickly, or too far, upon the harmlessness of a petticoat, and as he had observed from a dense blackberry thicket on the other side of the fence, while she was at work hoeing her potatoes there was an air about Mrs. Gammit which seemed to give her petticoats the lie. He had watched her for some time before he could quite satisfy himself that she was a mere woman.
The rake very properly resented this. It fell upon him and clutched at his fur like a live thing. Startled quite out of his self-possession, he retreated hurriedly into the moonlight, for further consideration of these unexpected phenomena. And as he did so, across the yard the kitchen door was flung open, and Mrs. Gammit, with the gun, rushed forth.
At a distance of about six feet the big cat stopped, and crouched, glaring with wide, pale eyes, and sniffing eagerly. Mrs. Gammit was amazed that the porcupines did not at once discharge a volley at him and fill him full of quills for his intrusion. The wildcat knew too much about porcupines to dream of attacking them. It was what they were eating that interested him.
A big black and yellow wasp buzzed angrily against the window-pane, bewildered because it could not get through the transparent barrier. A little grey hen, with large, drooping comb vividly scarlet, hopped on to the doorsill, eyed Mrs. Gammit with surprise and disapprobation, and ran away to warn the rest of the flock that there was a woman round the place.
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