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closer to Trixie. "Ooh," she murmured, "it’s much more scary walking through here than it is riding." The trail was thickly carpeted with pine needles, and overhead heavy branches of the trees shaded them from the noon sun.
    Honey jumped as a chipmunk appeared from nowhere and scurried across the path. "Regan told me there were foxes and skunks in these woods," she said with a little shiver. "Do you think one of them will attack us, Trixie?"
    Golly, she is nervous, Trixie thought. She said out loud, "Of course they won’t, silly. Wild animals never attack humans unless we attack them first."
    "How about that game hen?" Honey demanded with a nervous laugh.
    "That was different," Trixie told her. "She thought we were after her eggs." She sniffed the air. I smell a skunk right now. Or a fox. Oh," she finished as they came around a bend in the trail, "there s a skunk now. Isn’t he cute?"
    The little black and white animal stood smugly in the middle of the path, several yards ahead of them.
    "Cute?" Honey cringed. "It’s a horrible, smelly creature, and it’ll squirt that awful stuff all over us."
    "Skunks aren’t really smelly at all," Trixie told her. "They’re very clean little animals, and the Indians in Canada think skunk meat is delicious to eat. Mart had a pet skunk once till Dad discovered it in the chicken coop calmly eating the eggs." She laughed. "They carry that fluid in two little sacs under their tails, and when they jump around that’s the time to run. Reddy didn’t run fast enough once, and it was days before Mother’d let him inside the house."
    "Oh, Trixie, please let’s go back," Honey begged. "I’m more afraid of skunks than anything else in the woods."
    "Well," Trixie said, "we’re perfectly safe unless we come too close. I’m going to throw this stone at him and see if that won’t make him move."
    Honey let the basket slip to the ground and got ready to run. The skunk, completely ignoring die pebble that bounced beside it, unconcernedly rooted through the leaves for a bug. The second stone landed on its back. The little animal stood perfectly still, as though considering the matter carefully, then, after a moment, ambled slowly across the path and into the woods.
    "See?" Trixie demanded triumphantly.
    "Yes," Honey said doubtfully. "But did you ever hear of a mad skunk?"
    "Of course not," Trixie cried in derision. "Where did you ever get such a dopey idea?"
    "From Jim," Honey told her in a low voice. "He said he hoped that the dog who frightened the horses this morning didn’t have rabies. He said that a mad dog will attack anything in its way, and if it bit a fox or a weasel or a skunk that animal would go mad, too, and attack anything or anybody."
    "I don’t believe it," Trixie said. "And, anyway, we’re not sure the dog did have rabies. It could have been foaming from the mouth because it got so hot thrashing around in the tangled vines." Trixie had already forgotten how terrified she had been earlier when she thought Bobby was alone in the woods with a mad dog, and she was convinced that Jim had deliberately made up a story about mad animals and dogs especially, just to tease Honey.
    When they arrived at the hedge, Honey drew back timidly. "You go first," she said. "I’m so jittery I think I’d faint if Queenie even cackled at me."
    Trixie laughed and led the way through the thicket, calling out to let Jim know that he didn’t have to hide. He promptly appeared at the window and eyed the lunch basket hungrily. "We ought to have a special signal," he said as they handed him the basket and climbed through the window. "I’ll teach you how to imitate a bobwhite; then, whenever I hear that bird call, I’ll always know it’s you."
    By the time they had spread out the picnic on the old mattress, both girls had learned how to whistle bob-white! almost as well as Jim could.
    "We really ought to clean up this place," Honey
    said, looking around the cluttered living room with distaste. "You