HAPPY JACK IS AFRAID TO GO HOME
Safety first is the best rule to insure a long life.
_Happy Jack._
Happy Jack didn't dare go home. Can you think of anything more dreadful
than to be afraid to go to your own home? Why, home is the dearest place
in the world, and it should be the safest. Just think how you would feel
if you should be away from home, and then you should learn that it
wouldn't be safe for you to go back there again, and you had no other
place to go. It often happens that way with the little people of the
Green Meadows and the Green Forest. It was that way with Happy Jack
Squirrel now.
You see, Happy Jack knew that Shadow the Weasel is not one to give up
easily. Shadow has one very good trait, and that is persistence. He is
not easily discouraged. When he sets out to do a thing, usually he does
it. If he starts to get a thing, usually he gets it. No, he isn't easily
discouraged. Happy Jack knows this. No one knows it better. So Happy
Jack didn't dare to go home. He knew that any minute of night or day
Shadow might surprise him there, and that would be the end of him. He
more than half suspected that Shadow was at that very time hiding
somewhere along the way ready to spring out on him if he should try to
go back home.
He had stayed in the room of Farmer Brown's boy until Mrs. Brown had
come to make the bed. Then he had jumped out the window into the big
maple tree. He wasn't quite sure of Mrs. Brown yet. She had kindly eyes.
They were just like the eyes of Farmer Brown's boy. But he didn't feel
really acquainted yet, and he felt safer outside than inside the room
while she was there.
"Oh dear, oh dear! What shall I do?
I have no home, and so
To keep me warm and snug and safe
I have no place to go!"
Happy Jack said this over and over as he sat in the maple tree, trying
to decide what was to be done.
"I wonder what ails that Squirrel. He seems to be doing a lot of
scolding," said Mrs. Brown, as she looked out of the window. And that
shows how easy it is to misunderstand people when we don't know all
about their affairs. Mrs. Brown thought that Happy Jack was scolding,
when all the time he was just frightened and worried and wondering where
he could go and what he could do to feel safe from Shadow the Weasel.
Because he didn't dare to go back to the Green Forest, he spent most of
the day in the big maple tree close to Farmer Brown's house. The window
had been closed, so he couldn't go inside. He looked at it longingly a
great many times during the day, hoping that he would find it open. But
he didn't. You see, it was opened only at night when Farmer Brown's boy
went to bed, so that he would have plenty of fresh air all night. Of
course Happy Jack didn't know that. All his life he had had plenty of
fresh air all the time, and be couldn't understand how people could live
in houses all shut up.
Late that afternoon Farmer Brown's boy, who had been at school all day,
came whistling into the yard. He noticed Happy Jack right away. "Hello!
You back again! Isn't one good meal a day enough?" he exclaimed.
"He's been there all day," said his mother, who had come to the door
just in time to overhear him. "I don't know what ails him."
Then Farmer Brown's boy noticed how forlorn Happy Jack looked. He
remembered Happy Jack's fright that morning.
"I know what's the matter!" he cried. "It's that Weasel. The poor little
chap is afraid to go home. We must see what we can do for him. I wonder
if he will stay if I make a new house for him. I believe I'll try it and
see."