Green Forest Stories, Thornton W. Burgess [ebook reader color screen .TXT] 📗

afraid of them. It was plain to see that they were having a good time. They were enjoying the chase. Chatterer looked down at their sharp little claws and more than ever he was sorry he had not let them alone.

By this time Chatterer was clinging to the very top of that tree. If those twins came up there, he would have to make the terrible jump to the ground. He shivered as he looked down. Would those surprising twins, or one of them, be able to get up near enough to reach him?

IX The Twins Have to Go Home

Obedience is good to see,
Especially when up a tree.

Mother Bear

Boxer and Woof-Woof were having the best time of their short lives. Climbing was great fun. Although this was the first time they had climbed a tree, they already felt quite at home up there where the branches grew. It was fun just to climb from branch to branch. It was still greater fun to chase that red-coated little rascal who had tried to scare them out of that tree. You see, this was the first time the twins had found anyone afraid of them, and it made them feel quite important. It made them feel big. They felt twice as big as when they had whimperingly started to climb that tree. So the twins were having a wonderful time.

But Chatterer the Red Squirrel was having anything but a wonderful time. He was wishing with all his might that he had kept his saucy tongue still; that he had not jumped over into that tree to try to scare those cubs; that he had not followed them in the first place; that they would become dizzy and afraid. He even wished that they would fall. The fact is, Chatterer was so badly frightened that he was capable of wishing almost anything dreadful if it would only give him a chance to escape.

Now if Chatterer had not been so badly frightened, he would have seen that Boxer, the twin who was in the lead, was already hesitating. He had reached a point where the branches were so small that they bent dangerously when he stepped on them. He had climbed as high as it was safe for him to climb, and he knew it. But having set out to catch that red mischief-maker, he couldn’t bear to give up. That is, he felt that if he did give up, Chatterer would boast that he had been too smart for the cubs and would make fun of them. And this is just what Chatterer would have done.

So while Chatterer was wishing with all his might that something would happen to those twins, the twins were wishing for some good excuse for stopping the chase without losing the respect they knew Chatterer now had for them.

Just then a deep, grumbly-rumbly voice came up to them from the foot of the tree. “Come down at once,” said the voice. It was the voice of Mother Bear.

“Yes’m,” replied Woof-Woof meekly, beginning to climb down.

“I want to catch this fellow who tried to scare us,” whined Boxer, pretending that he didn’t want to come down.

“You heard what I said,” replied Mother Bear, and her voice was more grumbly-rumbly than before. “It is time to go home. Come down this instant.”

“Yes’m,” replied Boxer, and this time he said it quite as meekly as had his sister Woof-Woof. There was something in the sound of Mother Bear’s voice that warned Boxer that it would be unwise to disobey.

So, with a warning to Chatterer that next time he would not get off so easily, Boxer began to climb down after Woof-Woof. When the cubs reached the lowest branches and had only the straight trunk to which to cling, they were once more afraid, and all the way down they whimpered. Somehow it was harder to climb down than up. It often is. But at last they were on the ground. Mother Bear’s eyes twinkled with pride, but she took care that the cubs should not see this.

“Obedience,” said she, “is the first great lesson in life. It saved you a spanking this time.” Then she led the way home.

And as Boxer and Woof-Woof followed, doing exactly as she did, they heard the jeering voice of Chatterer the Red Squirrel.

“Couldn’t catch me! Couldn’t catch me!” jeered Chatterer.

X The Twins Get Even with Peter Rabbit

It isn’t nice; it isn’t kind;
’Tis not at all the thing to do;
But those who do not take a chance
Of getting even are but few.

Mother Bear

This is sad but true. It is so everywhere in the Great World, and the Great World would be a much better place in which to live if it were not so. It is the desire to get even that makes much of the trouble and the hard feeling and the unhappiness everywhere. But there are times when getting even certainly does give a lot of satisfaction. It was so with the twins, Boxer and Woof-Woof.

You remember that the very first time they ventured out from under the great windfall Peter Rabbit had given them a great fright by thumping the ground with his hind-feet as only Peter can thump. The twins were so small then and they knew so little of the Great World, in fact nothing at all, that Peter had seemed to them a terrible fellow. They never had forgotten him. Whenever they were outside the great windfall, they watched for him, ready to run at sight of him.

But it was a long time before they saw Peter again, and when they did they had grown so that they were considerably bigger than he. Besides, they had been out on several trips into the Great World with Mother Bear and had learned many things, for little Bears learn very fast and have the best of memories. At last they saw Peter again. It happened this way:

Peter had