The Cheerful Cock said, “To the Fox’s den
I will go, I can’t tell you tho’ just when.
I’ll accuse him of everything he’s done
and make him pay for his reckless fun.”
One day, the Cheerful Cock was angry as could be, for he woke to find his Aunt Matilda and Uncle Jim and fifteen of his cousins gone out of the barnyard.
He knew the Funny Fox was to blame, for the Merry Wind told him so.
For once, the Cheerful Cock was sad, and he made out a list of all the complaints he had to make, and he wrote them down on paper. Putting on his best spurs, off he went to the Fox’s den. On the den door was a sign, “Gone for a walk by the garden wall.”
Now it happened that the Funny Fox had heard that the Cheerful Cock was very angry, as indeed he should be, so he had put on the dress of a monk, hoping no one would know him in his disguise.
The Cheerful Cock was near-sighted and took him for a real monk, and so he recited his troubles, thinking he had a kind, sympathetic listener.
He did not see the Fox’s long sharp nose. He did not notice his bushy tail.
Just as he was through his story of wrongs, the pious-looking monk (for it was no other than the Funny Fox) made a spring at him, and the Cheerful Cock had just time to fly over the garden wall!
He had thought the monk handsome in his fine clothes, but now he called back, “Handsome is as handsome does.”
