Yes, sir, Mother Black Bear’s pleasure was short lived. For no sooner had the cubs started off side by side across the pond than there was a curious rattling sound behind her, like the rattling of dry twigs.

She turned her head like a flash. It was Mrs. Porcupine, her quills rattling together as she walked. She was headed straight for the little pond, and Mother Black Bear knew there was going to be trouble.

Not that she would have cared, had she been alone. She would have given it up willingly enough. In fact, had she been alone, she would have preferred a larger pond for her swim.

But Mother Black Bear was not alone. She had fat little Woof and Twinkly Eyes to look out for. And it certainly was too bad, now that they were really making headway with their swimming lesson, to have to give up their pond. Twinkly had at last forgotten to be afraid, but if they had to give up the pond to Mrs. Porcupine, he might lose his nerve again, and all her work would have gone for nothing.

Yet learn to swim he must, before ever another accident befell him. Of this Mother Black Bear felt very certain.

She, therefore, eyed Mrs. Porcupine a bit anxiously; the more so when she spied the three little porcupines creeping along behind her.

Of all the folk that live in the Deep Woods, there is probably none more absolutely fearless than Mrs. Porcupine, and for a very good reason. She knows that nothing can so much as touch her without getting badly hurt on her barbed quills.

Where everyone else darts along the forest trails alert to catch the slightest sight or sound or smell that might mean an enemy, she strolls along with the utmost calm. She knows that no one can touch even her babies without getting hurt. For they are just as full of quills as she is, and their little quills are even sharper.

But if she fears no attack, neither will she harm other animals unless attacked. It is only when they come too near that she strikes at them with her barbed tail.

This afternoon she was headed for the self-same little pond that Mother Black Bear had selected, and for the self-same reason, as we shall see. When she saw Mother Black Bear and the two cubs, she didn’t stop for even an instant. She came right on to the edge of the pond as if there were no one already occupying it. She looked straight past Mother Black Bear as if she hadn’t been there at all, and grunted to her babies to climb on her back.

Mother Black Bear gave a growl. “We got here first,” said she, crossly. But Mrs. Porcupine pretended not to hear. She just went on into the water with her babies on her back—she had flattened down her quills for them—and from all the concern she showed, you would have thought she didn’t know the bears were there. That was her way of showing fight. She hadn’t a doubt in the world that they would give their places to her.

“Come—quick!” Mother Black Bear called to her cubs, losing her nerve as the quilly creature allowed herself to float over on the side the cubs were on. “Quick, I tell you!—Scramble!”