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I
T was a beautiful morning. Everybody said so, and what everybody says
is usually so. Peter Rabbit wore the broadest kind of a smile. He
hopped and skipped all the way down the Lone Little Path on to the
Green Meadows and was waiting there when Old Mother West Wind came
down from the
Sammy Jay had risen very early that morning. Almost at once his sharp
eyes had seen Peter Rabbit sending out the Merry Little Breezes.
Sammy's wits are as sharp as his eyes, and you know it is very hard to
really fool sharp wits. Right away Sammy had guessed what the Merry
Little Breezes were hurrying so for, but he sat and waited and
listened. Pretty soon he heard Drummer the Woodpecker start a long
Reddy was not yet out of bed, but when he heard Sammy Jay at his door, he tumbled out in a hurry. He didn't stop to get any breakfast, because he had planned to get all he could eat at the party. So he hurried over to where the party was to be. Very cautiously he crept up, and when he was quite sure that no one was about, he crawled into a hollow log which was open at one end. There he stretched himself out and made himself as comfortable as he could.
Pretty soon Shadow the Weasel joined Reddy Fox in the hollow log, and they whispered and chuckled while they waited. They knew that Blacky the Crow was safely hidden in the top of a tall pine, where he could see all that went on, and that Sammy Jay was flying about over the Green Meadows and through the Green Forest, pretending that he was attending wholly to his own business, but really watching all the preparations for Peter Rabbit's party.
At the foot of a tree, in the
top of which Prickly Porky the Porcupine was eating his breakfast, sat
old