His back humped up like an
arch. His head was rather small for the size of his body, short
and rather round. His neck was even shorter. His eyes were small
and very dull. It was plain that he couldn't see far, or clearly
unless what he was looking at was close at hand. His ears were
small and nearly hidden in hair. His front teeth, the gnawing
teeth which showed him to be a Rodent, were very large and bright
orange. His legs were short and stout. He had four toes on each
front foot and five on each hind foot, and these were armed with
quite long, stout claws.
But the queerest thing and the most interesting thing about Prickly
Porky was his coat. Not one among the other little people of the
Green Forest has a coat anything like his. Most of them have a
soft, short under fur protected and more or less hidden by longer,
coarser hair. Prickly Porky had the long coarse hair and on his
back it was very long and coarse, brownish-black in color up to
the tips, which were white. Under this long hair was some soft
woolly fur, but what that long hair hid chiefly was an array of
wicked-looking little spears called quills. They were white to the
tips, which were dark and very, very sharply pointed. All down the
sides were tiny barbs, so small as hardly to be seen, but there
just the same. On his head the quills were about an inch long,
but on his back they were four inches long, becoming shorter
towards the tail.
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