A BIG WHITE BIRD
Mrs. Martin looked up, smiling at the three children. She was thinking
of setting out the lunch which had been brought along, and perhaps her
mind was so much on this, wondering whether there would be enough for
five hungry children, that, at first, she did not know just what Tom
and Ted were saying.
“Come on, Mother!” cried Ted to her. “You come and see what it is!”
“Where shall I come?” she asked, getting up, as Ted tugged at her hand
to help her to her feet.
“Come to the growlery hole,” begged Tom.
“And me want my wed ball!” cried Trouble.
“Is this some game you are playing?” asked Mrs. Martin, looking first
at one and then the other. “Have you taken Trouble’s ball and hidden
it, Teddy?”
“Oh, no’m!” answered the little Curlytop boy. “Trouble threw his ball
down a hole. Tom and I tried to get it out for him, but every time we
poke our hands or a stick in a growl comes out of the hole.”
“What comes out?” asked Mrs. Martin in surprise.
“A growl!” answered Tom. “It’s a growl, like a dog, and that’s why we
call it the growlery hole.”
“Maybe it’s Skyrocket, Mother!” suggested Ted. “Please come and see.”
“Oh, it couldn’t be Skyrocket,” said Mrs. Martin. “If your dog were in
a hole he’d come out as soon as you called him. Besides, how would
Skyrocket get here?”
“He might get away from the Gypsies,” answered Ted. “Anyhow, Mother,
come and see what’s in the growlery hole, please!”
“Very well, I’ll come,” said his mother. “But it’s probably only a
little squirrel or chipmunk that thinks you’re trying to hurt it.”
“Does a squirrel or a chipmunk growl?” asked Tom.
“Well, I don’t know that they exactly growl,” answered Mrs. Martin,
“but they make funny noises. However, we’ll go see what it is.”
As she was starting back with the three boys to the place that Ted and
Tom called the growlery hole, Jan and Lola came over the top of a
little hill.
“Where are you going, Mother?” asked Jan. “Is it time to eat?”
“Not quite,” answered the Curlytops’ mother. “But it will be soon. I
am going with the boys to look at a growlery hole. Do you want to
come, Jan and Lola?”
“Is a growlery hole nice?” asked Janet.
“I don’t know—I never saw one,” Mrs. Martin answered with a smile.
“Tell them about it, Ted.”
Which Ted and Tom did, in quite excited voices, you may be sure.
“Is it very loud growls that come out?” asked Ted’s sister.
“If they’re as loud as thunder I don’t want to see them!” declared
Lola.
“You can’t _see_ growls, you _hear_ ’em!” exclaimed Tom.
“Well, we’ll go, anyway, and see _and_ hear,” said Janet.
So Lola and Janet went with Mrs. Martin, Trouble, Ted, and Tom to the
“growlery hole.”
“There it is!” cried Tom, after a little walk. “There’s the growlery
hole!”
“Yes, there it is!” added Ted.
They pointed to a small hole under the overhanging ledge of a rock.
“My wed ball down there!” said Trouble. “Me want wed ball!”
“All right. Mother will see if she can get it for you,” promised Mrs.
Martin with a smile. “But first I want to hear the growl.”
“Just poke a stick down, or your hand, and you’ll hear it,” said Tom.
“I think I’d better put a stick down first,” answered Mrs. Martin. “If
there is some animal there—and there seems to be from what you boys
say—he might bite me. A stick will be safer.”
And when she thrust down the same stick that Tom and Ted had used,
surely enough there sounded first a growl and then a queer little
barking noise.
“Oh, is it Skyrocket?” cried Janet.
“No, I think not,” answered her mother. “It doesn’t sound at all like
our little dog. But there’s some animal there, that’s sure, and I
don’t believe that it is quite as harmless as a squirrel or a rabbit.
I’ll tell you what we’ll do.”
“What?” cried the four larger children in a chorus.
“We’ll wait until Uncle Ben comes,” was the answer. “He knows a lot
about the woods and about animals.”
“Uncle Ben get my wed ball?” asked Trouble.
“Yes, we’ll have Uncle Ben get your red ball if he can,” his mother
told him. “And now we might as well go back and have our lunch.”
“But maybe the bear in the growlery hole will take Trouble’s red ball
while we’re gone,” said Teddy.
“It isn’t a bear in there—that’s sure,” answered Mrs. Martin. “There
are no bears around here.”
They all went back to the little grassy hill under the shade of the
trees, and near the spring of clear, cold, bubbling water. There Mrs.
Martin set out the lunch on a big flat stump for a table, and the
children sat down on the ground to eat it.
“Oh! Ah! Um!” murmured Teddy and Janet when they saw their mother set
out some jam tarts on a little wooden plate.
“You may pass them, Janet,” said her mother, and Janet, very politely,
passed the jam tarts first to Lola, she being company, and next to
Tom, he being company also.
“Me want jam tart!” cried Trouble, reaching across the stump-table.
“Yes, you shall have one, dear,” said Janet, and she passed the plate
to him next, at the same time smiling at Tom and Ted. They understood
what this meant—that Ted would have to wait until his little brother
had been served. Then came Ted’s turn, and next Janet offered the
plate to her mother.
“Help yourself, dear,” said Mrs. Martin. “I am not very hungry.”
But the Curlytops were, and so were Trouble and Tom and Lola. And I
wish you could have seen them all eat! No, on second thought, I don’t
wish that. It would have made you so hungry that you would go right
out to the kitchen, I’m sure, and ask whoever was there to make some
jam tarts. And there might just happen to be no jam, you know.
So we’ll pass over that part and I’ll tell you what happened next.
Lola was eating a second jam tart, and had just taken one bite from
it, when Janet asked her to pass the sugar. Lola put her tart down on
a plate at her side to reach for the sugar bowl, and when she turned
again to take up her piece of pastry it was gone.
“Tom Taylor!” she exclaimed, looking sharply at her brother, who sat
next to her, “did you take my jam tart?”
“Why no, I didn’t take it,” he answered.
“You’re eating one!” exclaimed Lola.
“This is my own!” Tom declared. “Ted passed it to me; didn’t you,
Ted?”
“Yes, I gave it to you,” was the answer.
“Well, somebody took mine!” cried Lola. “I put it down to hand Jan the
sugar, and now it’s gone!”
“I think I can show you who took it, Lola, my dear,” said Mrs. Martin,
in a low voice.
“Who?” asked the little girl.
“Look over there, on that little stump,” was the whispered answer.
“There is the little chap who took it.”
Lola and the others looked, and saw a pretty striped chipmunk, a
little animal something like a squirrel. The chipmunk was sitting up
on the flat stump, and, held in its paws, was the missing jam tart.
Mr. Chipmunk was eating away as fast as he could at Lola’s tart, and
he seemed to like it. He didn’t mind in the least that she had taken a
bite out of it. Though of course I suppose he would rather have had a
whole one.
“There is the burglar who took your tart, Lola!” said Mrs. Martin.
“Oh, did he come up here when I wasn’t looking and take it?” asked the
little girl who was visiting the Curlytops.
“That’s just what he did. The chipmunks in these woods are very tame,”
said Mrs. Martin. “I have heard campers say they would sometimes jump
up on the table and take pieces of bread. The little animals are so
pretty and harmless that no one hurts them, so they grow bolder and
bolder. Next time put your jam tart down in front of you, and then you
can shoo the chipmunk away if he comes after it.”
“Maybe I won’t have any more jam tarts,” said Lola.
“Oh, yes, I have some more in another box,” answered Mrs. Martin, with
a laugh. “But watch out for chipmunks!”
And they did, after that. They watched the one that had taken Lola’s
tart as it sat on the stump eating it until Trouble laughed so hard at
the queer motions of the striped animal that Mr. Chipmunk seemed not
to like it, and away he scampered, carrying what was left of the tart
with him.
There was no other accident to the rest of the picnic lunch, except
that a lot of ants crawled on a piece of bread and sugar that Trouble
laid down for a moment, and some bees buzzed around when Mrs. Martin
brought out a can of peaches. But the bees stung no one, and Trouble
said the ants could have his bread.
The dishes were put away—there was no lunch itself left, you may be
sure—and when the crumbs had been brushed into a little pile for the
birds, and the scattered papers piled under a rock so they would not
blow about and make the woods untidy, Ted looked down toward Silver
Lake and cried:
“Here comes Uncle Ben!”
“Yes, that’s our boat,” said Mrs. Martin, shading her eyes from the
sun and peering toward the boat at which Ted pointed.
“Now we’ll find out what’s in the growlery hole!” exclaimed Tom.
Uncle Ben was almost knocked down by the rush of four eager children
at him when he reached the shore, all crying:
“Uncle Ben! Uncle Ben!”
“What’s the matter?” he asked, when he had made the motor boat fast to
shore. “Did you think I wasn’t coming?”
“Oh, no. But we want you to see what’s in the growlery hole!” cried
Ted.
Then they told Uncle Ben what they meant, and when Mrs. Martin had
nodded, to show that there was really something in the story so
breathlessly gasped out, Uncle Ben said:
“Well, we’ll go and see about this. Show me the growlery hole.”
Eagerly Tom and Ted led the way, hurrying on ahead of the sailor. Mrs.
Martin, with Trouble, Janet, and Lola followed.
“There it is!” cried Ted, pointing.
“Me want my wed ball!” cried Trouble.
Uncle Ben looked at the hole. Then he took the stick which had been
left beside it and poked it down. Suddenly, just as had happened when
the boys and Mrs. Martin did this, there was a growl, followed by a
tiny bark.
“Oh, ho! I know what that is!” said Uncle Ben.
From his pocket he took a heavy leather glove that he used when he
worked around the motor in the gasolene boat. Drawing this glove on
his hand, the old sailor stretched out on the ground, and thrust his
hand and arm into the hole as far as it would go. Then he seemed to be
feeling around, down inside, and a moment later he pulled something
out of the hole.
“Is it my wed ball?” asked Trouble.
“It’s a baby dog!” cried Janet, as she caught sight of something alive
and wiggling in Uncle Ben’s gloved hand.
“No, it’s a little baby fox,” said Uncle Ben. “That’s what the
growlery hole is, children—the den of a fox. But the big foxes are out
now, hunting chickens, perhaps. Only the little ones are at home. This
is one of them.”
He held out a little animal with a sharp nose, a rather large tail,
and very bright eyes for the children to see. The baby fox tried to
get away, but Uncle Ben held it firmly though gently.
“Could we take it home with us?” asked Ted eagerly.
“I’m afraid it’s too small to be taken away from the mother fox,”
answered Uncle Ben. “Later on, perhaps, we can come back and get one
of the little foxes when they are bigger. I once knew a boy who had a
tame fox for a pet. But after a while it began to steal chickens from
the neighbors’ coops, so the boy had to let his fox go.”
“Did de fox eat my wed ball?” Trouble wanted to know.
“I guess not,” answered Uncle Ben. “I’ll feel around down there and
see if I can get it. I’ll hurry though. There are three or four little
foxes in there, and the father and mother fox may come back at any
moment, and as they can bite pretty hard when they try, I don’t want
my hand in the hole then, even with a glove on. I put it on because I
thought there were foxes in the hole, and I guessed right.”
Uncle Ben gave Mrs. Martin the baby fox to hold in her lap while he
put his hand down in the hole again. The tiny animal did not seem
afraid now, and it did not try to bite. The five children stroked its
soft pretty fur gently.
“Here’s your rubber ball, Trouble,” said Uncle Ben at last, as he
pulled his arm out of the fox hole for the second time.
“Are the little foxes there yet?” asked Tom.
“No, they seem to have gone farther back in the den,” answered the
sailor. “And I guess we’d better put this one back with his brothers
and sisters, so he’ll be there when his father and mother come back.”
After the children had given a last look at the little wild animal,
Uncle Ben put it down at the mouth of the hole, and in the tiny chap
scampered, probably very glad to be at home again. Then with Trouble
holding tightly to his red ball, the picnic party went down to the
boat, talking on the way of the fine time they had had.
“It was a regular adventure!” exclaimed Tom.
“It surely was,” agreed Ted. “I’m coming back next week and get a
fox.”
“So’m I,” cried all the other children.
Across Silver Lake puffed the motor boat, and soon they were all at
Sunnyside once more. Daddy Martin was there to greet them, having
spent the day at his office in Cresco, coming down on the evening
train.
Of course he had to be told all about the picnic and the loss of
Trouble’s ball, the finding of it in the growlery hole, and the way
the chipmunk took Lola’s jam tart.
“How does it look at our house, Daddy?” asked Ted of his father.
“Oh, just about the same,” was the answer. “It’s lonesome, though,
with you Curlytops away. I wouldn’t want to stay in Cresco without
you.”
“Did you see Miss Ransom?” asked Janet. “And did she get back her
queer box that the burglars took?”
“Yes, I saw her. But she hasn’t her box yet, and they haven’t caught
the burglars,” answered her father.
“You didn’t see Skyrocket, did you?” asked Ted.
“No,” was the answer, “I didn’t.”
The next morning after breakfast Uncle Ben came up from the little
office on the end of the pier that Mr. Martin owned.
“Some of our rowboats drifted off in the night,” said the sailor to
Mr. Martin. “A man told me they were about a mile down the lake shore.
I’ll take the motor launch and go after them. Do any of the children
want to come?”
“Oh, yes!” cried Ted and Janet, Lola and Tom.
“Me tum too!” cried Trouble.
“I can take them all if you’ll let me,” said the sailor to Mrs.
Martin.
“Well, take them,” she said. “Now be good children with Uncle Ben!”
she told them, as they started off.
“Yes’m, we will!” was the answer.
It was a nice little trip down the lake after the missing boats. They
were seen on shore, just where the man had told Uncle Ben they would
be, and soon the sailor was tying them to the stem of the motor boat
to tow them back.
While he was doing this, the children wandered along to a little shady
cove, and Tom and Ted, who always carried fishlines in their pockets,
started to try their luck.
Uncle Ben had made fast the last boat, and he was going in search of
the children, whom he could hear talking, but not see, when Lola came
running up to him.
“Oh, Uncle Ben! Uncle Ben!” she cried. “A big white bird has got hold
of Trouble, and it’s trying to fly away with him! Come and get Trouble
away from the big, white bird!”