WHERE THE SQUIRREL LED VIOLET.
While Violet stood wondering thus, she saw a squirrel on the fence,
nibbling upon a nut. As soon as she stirred, he darted along a rail or
two, and then, waiting till she came up with him, went nibbling again.
"You needn't feel so grand with your spry legs. I guess I can run as
well as you," said Violet.
The squirrel tucked the nut under one arm, and with a whisk of his bushy
tail, darted like lightning along the rails, leaving Violet so far
behind she thought he had gone into the wood; but when she had reached
far enough herself, there he sat, quietly nibbling at his nut again, and
soon as he saw her, whisked up into a tree, and from among the high
boughs called, "Cheep, cheep, chip! Which beat, little girl?"
Violet could not see him, he went so fast and far; and as she looked up
among the leafy boughs, he dropped the nut right into her face, and ran
round and round the limb, and called "Cheep, cheep, chip!" again, as if
he were laughing at her.
Violet laughed too, and threw the nut back at him, looking first to see
how clean he had eaten out the meat.
Away darted squirrel, without waiting to chip this time, and Violet
called, as he ran,--
"It's all very fine to whisk along so fast, mister; but I should like to
know how much good your travelling does. I know you can't _see_ a thing,
any more than they can in the rail cars I've heard about. You're welcome
to your legs so long as you leave the brook, and the flowers, and birds
for puss and me."
But he only answered by dropping another nut from directly over her
head, and she followed him into the wood--the beautiful, cool, still
wood. Violet left off singing as she entered it; for she loved to hear
the rustle of the ripe leaves, and to watch the tiny fibres falling
lightly from the pines, and hear the nuts and acorns rattle down, and to
see the spider webs and insects glitter wherever a gleam of sunshine had
stolen through the boughs.
Her hands were full of flowers, which she had gathered on the way; for
she did not mean her new cup should be empty when the good parents came
home.
So she had picked such a splendid bunch!--bright red cardinal flowers
from the swamp; and along by the brook side, where it was sunniest, she
found beautiful blue fringed gentians; and farther on branches of golden
rod, that looked like little elm trees changed to gold; and on farther
still, by the edge of the wood, where, as they waved, they seemed
beckoning her, she found plenty of asters, white as snow, with little
yellow eyes twinkling out among the petals, or else rich purple with
deep gold inside; and she had some of the everlasting flowers too, like
bunches of pure pearls.
Violet crept under the deep shade of the boughs, where the brook was
gurgling over its mossy stones, and laid the stems of her flowers there
to keep them fresh, making a wall of pebbles around them, so that the
water, which tripped along so fast, should not carry them away.
For once, when she forgot to do this, she had no sooner placed her
flowers in the brook than off they sailed down stream, and scattered so
fast and far she couldn't think of finding them all again.
Violet laughed when she remembered that day, and how the brook, full of
its mischief, had run away with her treasures, and scattered them any
and every where along its banks, setting some upright, as if they were
growing again, and wedging some under the stones, and tangling some
under the fence, and floating some down the hill and through the sunny
field, so fast they seemed chasing the little fish that made their home
in the brook.
Even away down by Reuben's house a few had strayed, and reached home so
much before Violet that she began to think the waves had, after all, as
spry feet as her own.