“way back in the first-off beginning,” said doctor muskrat impressively, “there was one of the things-from-under-the-earth who really wanted to be good——”

“the skunk!” exclaimed nibble rabbit. “wasn’t it?”

“was it?” asked stripes skunk.

doctor muskrat didn’t answer right away. he sat there sleeking his whiskers with a clammy wet paw to hide a smile, and his little eyes were twinkling. “i was just wondering,” he went on at last, “whether they still tell this story in your family or whether you made up your mind on your own account.”

“on my own account,” owned stripes truthfully. “i got awfully scared at what the little owls told me after you found out i’d been making trouble for tad coon. and i got to thinking. then it seemed as if i just had to try how it would be to live so nice and peaceful—the way you want it.” he was squirming a pebble in his paw and squinting down his pointy nose, looking very much ashamed of himself.

“ah,” cried doctor muskrat in a delighted voice. “that’s exactly the story of the first skunk in the first-off beginning. he was bad—just as bad as all the other things-from-under-the-earth. he went running around, making all the trouble he could, while mother nature was away fixing up the other half of the world and this half all went wrong again. you remember, nibble, how the sun and the wind and the rain didn’t take care of things the way she’d ordered them to, so winter came, and the plants hid in the earth and wouldn’t be eaten, and her very own new creatures got so terrible starvation hungry that some of them took to eating each other—like the wolves ate the cows.

“all the things-from-under-the-earth wore scales in the first-off beginning. when winter came most of them went right back under the earth and they stayed scaly, and are to this very day. but some of them found it was so easy to mother nature’s poor starved new creatures they couldn’t bear to stop eating them. they didn’t bother picking their poor lean bones; they just ate the tender parts that weren’t so starvation thin—like brains. they drank blood, and it went to their heads, so at last they killed for the sheer fun of killing.”

“like killer the weasel,” nodded stripes knowingly.

“like some of mother nature’s own creatures, the wildcats and the wolves,” said doctor muskrat. “and they didn’t care a bit who they were killing, either. if the things-from-under-the-earth came near they took after them. they took after the first skunk whenever they came across him—you’d better believe he was scared! the ground was so frozen by that time that he couldn’t dig down into it. so he hid in a hollow tree, with nothing but his scales on, and he was terribly cold and miserable and unhappy. and that was the first thing that set him to thinking.”

“think of being in a windy tree with nothing but a clammy coat of scales on,” said nibble, his teeth almost chattering. “sometimes it’s bad enough in the pickery things, and they surely keep the wind off.”

“well, he didn’t suffer very long,” went on the old doctor. “the first thing mother nature said was, ‘any one can have fur that wants it.’ now she didn’t say ‘my own creatures,’ nor she didn’t say ‘except the bad ones’—she just said ‘any one.’ and there was the first skunk in a nice warm suit of fur, looking like any of her own things, except that his earholes were so far over the sides of his head his ears came too low down—and so did those of all the things-from-under-the-earth; that’s one way you can always tell them. and he was so happy. he said to himself, ‘this is all i wanted,’ and he curled right up tight and fell fast asleep.

“but when he woke up he began to think again. and by this time he could think of several things he wanted. so he started out to find how he’d get them. and it didn’t take him long to discover that he got his fur because mother nature gave it to him; or to learn not to hunt her up where she was busy trying to put things in order in this half of the world again.

“she was fairly discouraged at the way the sun and the wind and the rain had spoiled it and disgusted at the way some of her creatures had been behaving—’specially the wolves, for eating the poor cows, you know. so the first skunk didn’t dare to trouble her; he just sat there listening. and he thought and thought, until his head was tired, for the things-from-under-the-earth aren’t used to thinking. perhaps that’s why they always stay bad ones——”

“it is!” stripes interrupted. “it certainly is.” and his little low ears were so pricked up over the idea that he didn’t look snaky and sneaky any more, but just nice and pert and interested.

“well, anyway,” continued doctor muskrat, “at last the first skunk crept up close and whined, ‘won’t you have the earth fixed up the way it was before very long? i want to ask something before you’re all done.’

“‘i can’t do that,’ she answered sadly, ‘because it’s been lived, so it can’t be done over again. i’ll have to do the best i can with things as they are. but who are you?’ she didn’t know him at all because he was so different from the last time she’d seen him. but she knew right off from his ears that she’d never made him.

“‘i’m the skunk,’ he answered. ‘this is my new fur you gave me this morning!’ and then wasn’t she angry—angry with herself and angry with him! it was hard enough to have the sun and the rain and the wind be so careless that they let winter come, without having some of the bad ones stay up from under the earth to hunt her poor beasts all through it. if they had only scales on they couldn’t, but here was one with fur. just because she was so hurried and flustered she hadn’t stopped to think what she’d been saying when she said ‘any one’ could have it.

“but the first skunk didn’t know how she felt about it. he was so pert and proud because he’d been thinking a little. he said, ‘i like the way you want things. i want to be good and live up here in the sun with your own creatures instead of going back down under the earth-that-is-common-to-all.’

“‘well, be good, then,’ she snapped. she really didn’t believe him.

“‘but,’ he argued, ‘someone will have to show me how.’ you see her own creatures were all made good, and they had to learn how to be bad from the bad ones. a bad one may want ever so much to be good, but he hasn’t any idea where to begin.

“she didn’t stop to think of that. she thought he was just making excuses, so she said, ‘you can stay up all winter now that you’ve got fur. i don’t see why you need anything else.’

“‘because i’m so small and so slow it’s terribly scary for me now that your own beasts have taken to killing,’ he whimpered. ‘i don’t know how to run away.’

“‘oho!’ mother nature was very sarcastic, but he didn’t know enough to know it. ‘you bad ones taught them how. i should think you’d be proud over the way they’ve learned it. what else do you want, then?’

“‘lots of things,’ answered the first skunk more cheerfully. ‘paws, for instance.’”

“did they have feet?” stripes skunk interrupted again. “snakes haven’t.”

“they had then,” replied doctor muskrat; “splay-footed, lizardy ones. the first skunk wasn’t sure which he wanted, handy-paws like tad coon or paddy ones like the wolves, so he could run away from them. he left all that to mother nature. ‘anyway you want to fix me,’ he said, ‘so i’m not always being chased and they can’t hold me if they do catch me.’

“mother nature just stared at that first skunk. ‘well, of all the impudence!’ she exclaimed. ‘of all the impudence! there you are, then!’

“and there he was, indeed! only he had paddy-paws on in front, where he wanted the handy-ones, and tad coon’s paws behind, where he couldn’t run on them, and a long, hairy tail no tooth could hang on to, and that terrible scent so no one could even want to try. you can imagine how that first skunk felt!”