Mother West Wind Where Stories | Page 5

didn't have
anything else to do he began to add a little more to his house. One day
he stepped on a thorn. 'Ouch!' cried Brer Rat, and then right away
forgot the pain in a new idea. He would cover his house with thorns,
leavin' just a little secret entrance for hisself! Then he would be safe,
wholly safe from his big neighbors, some of whom had begun to look
at him with such a hungry look in their eyes that they made him right
smart uncomfortable. So he spent his time, did Brer Rat, in huntin' for
the longest and sharpest thorns and in cuttin' the branches on which
they grew. These he carried to his house and piled them around it and
on it until it had become a great pile with sharp thorns stickin' out in
every direction, and the hungriest of the big people of the forest passed
it at a respectful distance.
"When Brer Rat had all the thorns he needed and more, he began to
collect other things and added these to his pile. Yo' see, he had found
that it was great fun to collect things; to find the queerest things he

could and bring them home and look at them and wonder about them.
So little by little his house became a sort of junk shop, the very first one
in all the Great World. Bright stones and shells, bones, anything that
caught his bright eyes and pleased them, he brought home. When he
was tired of huntin' fo' food or more strange things he would sit and
gloat over his treasures and play with them. And then the first thing he
knew he had a name. Yes, Suh, he had a name. He was called Miser.
"Of course Brer Miser hadn't lived ve'y long befo' he found out that one
law of the Great World was that things belonged to whoever could get
them and keep them. He saw that some thought themselves ve'y smart
when they stole from their neighbors. Brer Miser didn't like this at all.
He was ve'y, ye'y honest, was Brer Miser. Perhaps he wasn't really
much tempted, not fo' a long time anyway.
"But at last came a time when he was tempted. Quite by accident he
found one of Mr. Squirrel's storehouses. In it were some nuts different
from any he ever had seen befo'. 'Brer Squirrel won't mind if Ah taste
just one,' said he, and did it. It tasted good; it tasted ve'y good indeed.
Brer Miser began to wish he had some nuts like those. When he got
home he couldn't think of anything but how good those nuts tasted. He
knew that all he had to do was to watch until Brer Squirrel was away
and then go he'p hisself. He knew that was just what any of his
neighbors would do in his place. But Brer Miser couldn't make it seem
just right any way he looked at it. He was too honest, was Brer Miser,
to do anything like that.
"He was sitting staring at his treasures but thinking about those nuts
when an idea popped into his head, an idea that made him smile until
Ah reckons he most split his cheeks. 'Ah knows what Ah'll do,' said he.
'Ah'll just he'p mahself to some of those nuts and Ah'll leave something
of mine in place of them. That's what Ah'll do.'
"And that's what he did do. He picked out a bright shell of which he
was very fond and he left it in Brer Squirrel's storehouse to pay fo' the
nuts that he took. After that he always helped himself to anything he
wanted, but he always left something to pay fo' it. It wasn't long befo'
his neighbors found out what he was doing, and then they called him

Miser the Trade Rat. Whenever anybody found something he didn't
want hisself, he took it to the little junk shop of Miser the Trade Rat
and traded it fo' something else, or left it where Miser would find it,
knowing that Miser would leave something in its place.
"And it's been just so with Miser's family ever since. There is one Rat
who is a credit to his family instead of a disgrace," concluded Ol'
Mistah Buzzard.

III
WHERE YAP-YAP THE PRAIRIE DOG USED HIS WITS
Peter Rabbit had just had a great fright. He is used to having great
frights, but this time it was a different kind of a fright. It was not for
himself that he had been afraid but for one of his old friends and
neighbors. Now that it was over, Peter drew a little breath of sheer
relief.
You see it was this way: Peter had started over for a