Raggylug 83 



chance together, the one who first sees the 

 oiher can keep himself unseen by 'freezing' 

 and thus have all the advantage of choosing 

 the time for attack or escape. Only those who 

 live in the woods know the importance of this ; 

 every wild creature and every hunter must 

 learn iu ; all learn to do it well, but not one of 

 them can beat Molly Cottontail in the doing. 

 Rag's mother taught him this trick by exam- 

 ple. When the white cotton cushion that she 

 always carried to sit on went bobbing away 

 through the woods, of course Rag ran his 

 hardest to keep up. But when Molly stopped 

 and ' froze,' the natural wish to copy made him 

 do the same. 



But the best lesson of all that Rag learned 

 from his mother was the secret of the Brier, 

 brush. It is a very old secret now, and to make 

 it plain you must first hear why the Brierbrush 

 quarrelled with the beasts. 



Long ago the Roses used to grow on bushes that had 

 no thorns. But the Squirrels and Mice used to climb 

 after them, the cattle used to knock them off with their 

 horns, the Possum would twitch them off with his long 

 tail, and the Deer, with his sharp hoofs, would break 

 them down. So the Brierbrush armed itself with spikes 

 i0j>rotect its roses and declared eternal war on all creat- 



