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 glow of it, for from his burrow Hedgehog clambered out and looked about. He sat upon his hind legs and sniffed for joy, standing like a sentinel of the guards beside the doorway of his hidden home. Such a morning! Such a wonderful, beautiful, sunny-sweet flowery morning! Who wouldn’t come out and be silly and gay?

But suddenly such a wind! Mad and wild from the top of the mountain, it came whirling over the land.

It bent the birches and swished through the bulrushes; hissed and whistled through the bushes and broke the stems of the fair tall flowers. It brought the clouds, all heavy with rain, and the thunder rumblings, and the lightning. Such a wild young wind! It spoiled the morning in May.—

»Here I go,« cried Hedgehog. »My burrow’s the best place, after all, for it’s going to rain good and plenty in about two minutes.«

»Wrong,« squeaked Mouse. »It is raining already.« The merry creature was wiping a great raindrop from her forehead with her dainty forepaws.

»Who cares?« laughed Frog hoarsely. »Not I! Let me sit upon a lily pad and feel the water swish under, and the water wash over me, and I’ll be as happy as Bee in clover.«

»Perhaps,« answered Hedgehog, »but by the looks of this little lump melting away on my foot, I should say you had better stay under that lily pad. This is to be no everyday sort of storm, for as sure as I’m born that lump is hail, and more of it we’ll have before you can say« and he never said it.

Crash! Flash! Smash! Thunder! Lightning! Hail!

Such a terrible hail storm upon that morning in May!