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Title: Tommy Smith's Animals
Author: Selous, Edmund
Language: English
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TOMMY SMITH’S ANIMALS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
TOMMY SMITH’S OTHER ANIMALS
JACK’S INSECTS
[Illustration: “_HE_ MAY HAVE FOUND _ANOTHER_ HARE”]
TOMMY SMITH’S
ANIMALS
BY
EDMUND SELOUS
WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY
G. W. ORD
TWELFTH EDITION
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published_ _October_ _1899_
_Second Edition_ _December_ _1900_
_Third Edition_ _December_ _1902_
_Fourth Edition_ _September_ _1905_
_Fifth Edition_ _April_ _1906_
_Sixth Edition_ _September_ _1906_
_Seventh Edition_ _January_ _1907_
_Eighth Edition_ _April_ _1907_
_Ninth Edition_ _November_ _1907_
_Tenth Edition_ _May_ _1908_
_Eleventh Edition_ _September_ _1909_
_Twelfth Edition_ _September_ _1912_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE MEETING 1
II. THE FROG AND THE TOAD 11
III. THE ROOK 25
IV. THE RAT 39
V. THE HARE 54
VI. THE GRASS-SNAKE AND ADDER 74
VII. THE PEEWIT 96
VIII. THE MOLE 115
IX. THE WOODPIGEON 143
X. THE SQUIRREL 166
XI. THE BARN-OWL 187
XII. THE LEAVE-TAKING 205
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
“HE MAY HAVE FOUND ANOTHER HARE” _Frontispiece_
“THAT IS WHY I AM SO WISE” 9
“I SHALL KEEP AWAKE TILL THE RAT COMES” 39
PAT, PAT, PAT. “DO YOU HEAR?” 41
“BITE HIM!” 51
“ALL HAPPY (EXCEPT THE HARE)” 63
“THERE ARE THREE FROGS IN MY STOMACH AT THIS MOMENT” 79
“WE MOLES ARE VERY HEROIC” 141
TOMMY SMITH’S ANIMALS
CHAPTER I.
THE MEETING
“_The owl calls a meeting, and has an idea:
They all think it good, though it SOUNDS rather queer._”
THERE was once a little boy, named Tommy Smith, who was very cruel to
animals, because nobody had taught him that it was wrong to be so. He
would throw stones at the birds as they sat in the trees or hedges; and
if he did not hit them, that was only because they were too quick for
him, and flew away as soon as they saw the stone coming. But he always
_meant_ to hit them—yes, and to kill them too,—which made it every
bit as bad as if he really had killed them. Then, if he saw a rat, he
would make his dog run after it, and if the poor thing tried to escape
by running down a hole, he and the dog together would dig it out, and
then the dog would bite it with his sharp teeth until it was quite
dead. It never seemed to occur to this boy that the poor rat had done
_him_ no harm, and that it might be the father or mother of some little
baby rats, who would now die of hunger. Even if the rat got away, he
would whip the dog for not catching it, yet the dog had done his best;
for, of course, dogs must do what their masters tell them, and cannot
know any better. It was just the same with hares or rabbits, squirrels,
rooks, or partridges. Indeed, this boy could not see any animal playing
about, and doing no harm, without trying to frighten it or to hurt it.
When the spring came, and the birds began to build their nests, and to
lay their pretty eggs in them, then it is dreadful to think how cruel
this Tommy Smith was. He would look about amongst the trees and bushes,
and when he had found a nest, he would take all the eggs that were in
it, and not leave even one for the poor mother bird to sit on when she
came back. Indeed, he would often tear down the nest too, after he had
taken the eggs. Perhaps you will wonder what he did with these eggs.
Well, when he had brought them home and shown them to his father and
mother, who never thought of scolding him, or to his little brothers
and sisters (for he was the eldest of the family), he would throw them
away, and think no more about them. If he had left them in the nest,
then out of each pretty little egg would have come a pretty little
bird. But now, for every egg he had taken away, there was one bird less
to sing in the woods in the spring and summer.
At last this boy became such a nuisance to all the animals round about,
that they determined to punish him in some way or other. They thought
the first thing to do was for all of them to meet together and have a
good talk about it. In a wood, not far off, there was a nice open space
where the ground was smooth and covered with moss. Here they all agreed
to come one fine night, for they thought it would be nice and quiet
then, and that nobody would disturb them, as, perhaps, they might do in
the daytime.
So, as soon as the moon rose, they began to assemble, and I wish you
could have been there too, to see them all come, sometimes one at a
time, and sometimes two or three together.
The rat was one of the first to arrive, and then came the hare and the
rabbit arm in arm, for they knew each other well, and were very good
friends. The frog was late, for he had had a good way to hop from the
nearest pond, where he lived, so that his cousin, the toad, who was
slower, but lived nearer, got there before him. The snake had no need
to make a journey at all, for he lived under a bush just on the edge
of the open space. All the little birds, too, had gone to roost in the
trees and bushes close by, so as to be ready in good time; and, when
the moon rose, they drew out their heads from under their wings, and
were wide awake in a moment. The rook and the partridge, and other
large birds, were there as well, and the squirrel sat with his tail
over his head, on the branch of a small fir tree. Then there were
weasels, and lizards, and hedgehogs, and slow-worms, and many other
animals besides.
In fact, if you had seen them all together, you would have wondered
how one little boy could have found time to plague and worry so many
different creatures. But you must remember that even a very _little_
boy can do a _great_ deal of mischief. Perhaps there were some animals
there that little Tommy Smith had not hurt, because he had not yet seen
them, but these came because they knew he _would_ hurt them as soon
as he could; and, besides, they were angry because their friends and
companions had been ill-treated by him.
At last it seemed as if there was nobody else to come, and that
everything was ready. Still, they seemed waiting for something, and
all at once a great owl came swooping down, and settled on a large
mole-hill which was just in the middle of the open space. Now, the owl,
as perhaps you know, is a very wise bird, and, for this reason, all the
other animals had chosen him to be the chief at their meeting, and to
decide what was best to be done, in case they should not agree amongst
themselves. He at once showed _how_ wise he was, by saying that before
he gave his own opinion he would hear what everybody else had to say.
Then everybody began to talk at once, and there was a great hubbub,
until the owl said that only one should speak at a time, and that the
hare had better begin, because he was the largest of all the animals
there.
So the hare stood up, and said he thought the best way to punish Tommy
Smith was for every one of them to do him what harm he could. For his
part, he was only a timid animal, and not at all accustomed to hurt
people. Still, he had very sharp teeth, and he thought he might be able
to jump as high as Tommy Smith’s face and give him a good bite on the
cheek or ear, and then run off so quickly that nobody could catch him.
The rabbit spoke next, and said that he was just as timid as the hare,
and not so strong or so swift. All _he_ could do was to go on digging
holes, and he hoped that some day Tommy Smith would fall into one of
them. The hedgehog then got up, and said he would hide himself in one
of these holes and put up his prickles for Tommy Smith to fall on. This
would be sure to hurt him, and perhaps it might even put one of his
eyes out. The rat thought it would be better if the hedgehog were to
get into Tommy Smith’s bed, so as to prick him all over when he was
undressed; but the hedgehog would not agree to this, as he did not
understand houses, and thought he would be sure to be caught if he went
into one.
“Well, then,” said the rat, “if you are afraid I will go myself, for I
know the way about, and am not at all frightened. In the middle of the
night, when it is quite dark, and when Tommy Smith is fast asleep, I
will creep up the stairs and into his room, and then I can run up the
counterpane to the foot of his bed and bite his toes.”
“Why his toes?” said the weasel. “_I_ can do much better than that, and
if you will only show me the way into his room, I will bite the veins
of his throat, and then he will soon bleed to death.”
“That would be taking too much trouble,” said the adder, coming from
under his bush. “You all know that _my_ bite is poisonous. Well, I
know where this bad boy goes out walking, so I will just hide myself
somewhere near, and when he comes by I will spring out and bite his
ankle. Then he will soon die.”
The birds, too, had different things to suggest. Some said they would
scratch Tommy Smith’s face with their claws, and others that they
would peck his eyes out. The frog wanted to hop down his throat and
choke him, and the lizard was ready to crawl up his back and tickle
him, if they thought _that_ would do any good.
At length, when everyone else had spoken, the owl called for silence,
and then he gave his own opinion in these words:—“I have now heard
what every animal has had to say, and I have no doubt that we could
easily hurt this boy very much, or perhaps even kill him, if we really
tried to. But would it not be a better plan, first to see if we cannot
make little Tommy Smith a better boy? Many little boys are unkind to
animals because they know nothing about them, and think that they are
stupid and useless. If they knew how clever we all of us really are,
and what a lot of good we do, I do not think they would be unkind to
us any more. I am sure that they would then have quite a friendly
feeling towards us. But they cannot know this without being taught.
Tommy Smith’s father and mother _ought_, of course, to teach him, but
as they will not do so, why should not we teach him ourselves? To do
this, we shall have to speak to him in his own language, as he does not
understand ours; but that is not such a difficult matter to us animals.
I myself can speak it quite well when I want to, for I often sit on
the trees near old houses at night, or even on the houses themselves,
and I can hear the conversations coming up through the chimneys. That
is why I am so wise. So I can easily teach all of you enough of it to
make _you_ able to talk to a little boy. My idea, then, is to _teach_
little Tommy Smith before we begin to _punish_ him, and it will be
quite as easy to do the one as the other. Only let the next animal that
he is going to kill or throw stones at, call out to him, and tell him
not to do so. This will surprise him so much that he will be sure to
leave off, and then each of us can tell him something about ourselves
in turn. In this way he will get such a high idea of all of us, that he
will never annoy us any more, but treat us with great respect for the
future.”
[Illustration: “THAT IS WHY I AM SO WISE”]
All the other animals thought this was a very clever idea of the owl’s,
and they agreed to do what he said, before trying anything else. So
they begged him to begin teaching them the little-boy language at once
(all except the rat, for he knew it too), so that they should lose no
time. This the owl was quite ready to do, and he taught them so well,
and they all learnt so quickly, that when little Tommy Smith got up
next morning to have his breakfast, there was hardly an animal in the
whole country that was not able to talk to him.
CHAPTER II.
THE FROG AND THE TOAD
“_Tommy Smith takes a turn in the garden next day,
And he finds the frog ready with something to say._”
AS soon as he had had his breakfast, Tommy Smith went out into the
garden. It had been raining a little, and the first thing he saw was a
large yellow frog sitting on the wet grass. Tommy Smith had a stick in
his hand, and he at once lifted it up over his shoulder.
“Don’t hit me,” said the frog. “That would be a _very_ wicked thing to
do.”
Tommy Smith was so surprised to hear a frog speak that he dropped his
stick and stood with both his eyes wide open for several seconds.
“Why do you want to kill me?” said the frog.
Tommy Smith thought he must say something, so he answered, “Because you
are a nasty, stupid frog.”
“I don’t know what you mean by calling me nasty,” said the frog. “Look
at my bright smooth skin, how nice and clean it is—cleaner than your
own face, I daresay, although it is not long since you have washed
it. As for my being stupid, you see that I can speak your language,
although you cannot speak mine; and there are lots of other things
which I am able to do, but you are not. I think I can catch a fly
better than you can.”
By this time it seemed to Tommy Smith as if it was quite natural to be
talking to an animal, so he said, “I never thought that a frog could
catch a fly.”
“You shall see,” said the frog. And as he spoke a fly settled on a
blade of grass just in front of him. Then all at once a pink streak
seemed to shoot out of the frog’s mouth; back it came again—snap! His
mouth, which had been wide open, was shut once more, and the fly was
nowhere to be seen.
“Have you caught it?” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes,” said the frog, “and swallowed it too.”
“But how did you do it?” said Tommy Smith; “and what was that funny
pink thing that came out of your mouth?”
“That was my tongue,” the frog answered.
“Your tongue!” cried Tommy Smith. “But it looked so funny—not at all
like my own tongue.”
“No,” said the frog. “My tongue is quite different to yours, and I do
not use it in the same way. Hold out your hand so that I can hop into
it, and then I will show you all about it.”
Tommy Smith did as he was told, and—plop! there was the frog sitting
in his hand. He at once opened his mouth, which was a very wide one,
and allowed Tommy Smith to look at his tongue. What a funny tongue it
was! It seemed to be turned backwards, for the tip, which was forked,
instead of being just inside the lips as it is with us, was right down
the throat, whilst the root of it was where the tip of our tongue is.
“But how do you use a tongue like that?” said Tommy Smith.
“Put the tip of your forefinger against your thumb,” said the frog;
“only, first, you must turn your hand so that the back of it is towards
the ground, and the palm upwards.” Tommy Smith did so. “Now shoot your
finger back as hard as you can.” Tommy Smith did this too. “That,” said
the frog, “is the way I shoot my tongue out of my mouth when I want to
catch a fly. Like this”—and he shot it out again. “You see it flies
out like the lash of a whip, and my aim is so good that it always hits
what I want it to, whether it is a fly or any other insect. Then I
bring it back, just as you would bring your finger back to your thumb
again, or as the lash of a whip flies back when you jerk the handle.
The tip of it goes right down my throat where it was before, and the
fly goes down with it.”
“But why does the fly stay on your tongue?” said Tommy Smith. “Why
doesn’t it fly away?”
“It would if it could, of course,” said the frog; “but it can’t. My
tongue, you see, is sticky—just feel it,—and so whatever it touches
sticks to it, and comes back with it, if it isn’t too large.”
“Well, it is very curious,” said Tommy Smith. “But when you said you
could catch a fly, I did not know that you were going to eat it too.
Then, do you like flies? and do you eat them every day?”
“I eat them when I can get them,” said the frog; “but I like them
better at night than in the daytime, if only I can catch them asleep.
_You_ eat during the day, and go to sleep at night. That is because
you are a little boy. _I_ am a frog, and we frogs like to be quiet in
the daytime, and come out to feed when it is dark. We eat all sorts of
insects—beetles, and flies, and moths, and caterpillars, and we eat
slugs as well, and that is why we are so useful.”
“Useful?” cried Tommy Smith. “Oh, I don’t believe that! I am sure that
a frog can be of no use to anybody.”
“If you were a gardener you would think differently,” said the frog;
“at least, if you were not a very ignorant one. Have I not told you
that I eat slugs and insects, and do you not know that slugs and
insects eat the leaves of the flowers and vegetables in your garden?
Have you never seen your father or his gardener pouring something
over his rose-trees to kill the insects upon them? Now, I eat a great
many insects in a single night, and I am only _one_ of the frogs in
your garden. There are others there besides me. If we were all to be
killed, your father would find it much more difficult to have nice
roses, and he would lose other flowers too, for there are insects which
do harm to all of them. As for the slugs, if you will go out some night
with a lantern, you may see them feeding on some of the handsomest
plants, with your own eyes. That is to say, unless one of us frogs
has been there; for if we have, you will not see any. Then you have
seen caterpillars feeding on the cabbages. Well, _I_ feed on those
caterpillars. So always remember that the boy who kills a frog, does
harm to his father’s garden.”
“I don’t want to do that,” said Tommy Smith; “so, if what you say is
true”—
“You can find it in a natural history book, if you look,” said the
frog; “but I ought to know best myself. And I can tell you this, that
when a frog speaks to a little boy, he always speaks the truth.”
“Well, then,” said Tommy Smith, “I will never hurt a frog again.”
How pleased the poor frog was when he heard that. He gave a great hop
out of Tommy Smith’s hand, and came down upon the grass again, and then
he hopped about for a little while, jumping higher each time than the
time before. “Frogs always speak the truth,” he said,—“when they speak
to little boys. And now, perhaps, you would like to learn something
more about me. Ask me any question you like, and I will answer it,
because of what you have just promised.”
This puzzled Tommy Smith a little, because he did not know where to
begin, but at last he said, “You seem to me a very big frog. Were you
always as big as you are now?”
“Why, of course not,” said the frog, “a frog grows up just as much as
a little boy does. I was once so small that you would hardly have been
able to see me. But, besides being smaller, I was quite a different
shape to what I am now. I had no legs at all, but instead of them I
had a long tail, with which I used to swim about in the water, so that
I was much more like a fish than a frog, and many people would have
thought that I was a fish.”
“That sounds very funny,” said Tommy Smith.
“But were not you once much smaller than you are now?” said the frog.
“Oh yes!” Tommy Smith answered, “but however small I was, I was always
a little boy, and had hands and feet, just as I have now.”
“With you it is different,” said the frog; “but there are some animals
who are one thing when they are born, but change into another as they
grow older. It is so with us frogs, and, if you listen, I will tell you
all about it.”
“Go on,” said Tommy Smith, “I should like to hear very much.”
“In the nice warm weather,” the frog continued, “we hop about the
country, and then we like to come into gardens. But in the winter we
go to ponds and ditches and bury ourselves in the mud at the bottom,
and go to sleep there. In the early spring, when the weather begins to
get a little warmer, we come up again, and then the mother frog lays
a lot of eggs, which float about in the water, and look like a great
ball of jelly. After a time, out of each egg there comes a tiny little
brown thing, and directly it comes out, it begins to swim about in the
water, as well as if it had had swimming lessons, although, of course,
it has never had any. It soon grows bigger, and then you can see that
it has a large round head and a long tail, but you cannot see any legs.
But, as it goes on growing, a small pair of hind legs come out, one on
each side of the tail, and then every day the tail gets smaller and the
hind legs larger. Still there are no front legs yet, but at last these
come too. The tail is now quite short, and the head and body begin to
look like a frog’s head and body, which they did not do before, and
they go on looking more and more like one, until, at last, the little
brown thing with a tail, that swam about like a fish in the water, has
changed into a little baby frog, that hops about on the land. Then this
little baby frog grows larger and larger, until, at last, he becomes a
fine fat frog, as big and as handsome as I am.”
“It all seems very curious,” said little Tommy Smith; “and I never knew
anything about it before.”
“That is because nobody ever told you,” said the frog, “and you have
never thought of finding out for yourself. But have you not passed by
ponds in the spring time and seen those little brown things with tails
that I have been telling you about swimming about in them?”
“Oh yes, I have!” said Tommy Smith; “but I always thought that those
were tadpoles.”
“They are tadpoles,” said the frog, “but they are young frogs for all
that. A little tadpole grows into a big frog, just as a little boy
grows into a big man. So you see, what a funny life mine has been, and
what a lot of curious things have happened to me.”
“Yes, you have had a funny life, Mr. Frog,” said Tommy Smith, “and I
think it is very interesting. But is there any other clever thing you
can do besides catching flies? I can catch flies myself, but I do it
with my hand instead of with my tongue.”
“I can change my skin,” said the frog, “and _that_ is something which
_you_ cannot do.”
“No,” said Tommy Smith; “and I do not believe you can do it either. I
think you are only laughing at me.”
“Well,” said the frog, “as it happens, my skin fits me quite
comfortably now, and is not at all too tight, so I do not want to
change it yet. But I have a cousin—a toad—who is quite ready to have
a new one. He lives a little way off, in the shrubbery; so if you would
like to see how he does it, I can bring you to him. He is very good
natured, like myself, and if you will only promise to leave off hurting
him, as well as me, he will be very pleased to show you, I am sure. I
must tell you, too, that he is almost as useful in a garden as I am,
for he lives on the same things, and catches flies and slugs just as I
do.”
“Then isn’t he _quite_ as useful?” said Tommy Smith; but as the frog
didn’t seem to hear, he went on with—“Then I will not hurt him any
more than I will you.”
“Come along, then,” said the frog; and he began to hop in front of the
little boy until they came to the shrubbery, where, in the mould beside
a laurel bush, there sat a great, solemn-looking toad.
“I have brought someone to see you,” said the frog. “This is little
Tommy Smith, who used to be such a bad boy, and kill every animal he
saw; but now he has promised not to hurt either of us.”
“I am glad to hear it,” answered the toad, “and I hope he will soon
learn to leave other creatures alone too. Well, what is it he wants?”
“He wants to see you change your skin,” said the frog.
“He had better look at me, then,” said the toad, “for that is just what
I am doing.”
Tommy Smith bent down to look, and then he saw that the toad was
wriggling about in rather a funny way, as if he was a little
uncomfortable. He noticed, too, that his skin had split along the
back, and it seemed to be wrinkling up and getting loose all over him,
although it had been too tight before. This loose skin was dirty and
old-looking, but underneath it, where it was split, Tommy Smith could
see a nice new one that looked ever so much better. The more the toad
wriggled, the looser the old skin got, and it was soon plain that he
was wriggling himself out of it, just as you might wriggle your hand
out of an old glove. At last he had got right out of it, and there lay
the old skin on the ground.
“You see,” said the frog, “that is how we change our skin, just as you
would change a suit of clothes. Does he not look handsome in his new
one?”
“Very handsome—for a toad,” said Tommy Smith. (The toad only heard the
first two words of this, so he was _very_ pleased.) “But what is he
doing with his old skin, now that he has got it off?”
“If you wait a little, you will see,” said the frog.
All this time the toad was pushing his old skin backwards and forwards
with his two front feet, and he kept on doing this until, at last, he
had rolled it up into a sort of ball. Then all at once he opened his
great wide mouth and swallowed the ball, just as if it had been a large
pill.
Tommy Smith was so surprised that he could hardly believe his eyes. “He
has swallowed his own skin!” he cried.
“Of course I have,” said the toad; “and the best thing to do with it,
_I_ think. I always like to be tidy, and not to leave things lying
about. Now, good-morning,” and he began to crawl away, for he was not
an _idle_ toad, but had business to attend to.
“And I have something to see about,” said the frog, “so I will
say good-bye, too, for the present. But remember what you have
promised—never to hurt a frog or a toad;” and, with two or three great
hops, he was out of sight.
Tommy Smith stood thinking about it all for some time, and then he ran
into the house to tell everybody all the wonderful things he had learnt
about frogs and toads, and to beg them never to kill any, because they
do good in the garden.
CHAPTER III.
THE ROOK
“_The rook gives advice which we must not neglect.
I hope that his CAWS will produce an effect._”
IT was a nice, fine afternoon, and Tommy Smith was just going out for a
little walk. He thought he would take his little terrier dog with him,
so he called, “Pincher! Pincher!” But Pincher was not there, so he had
to go without him. He was very sorry for this, for when he had got a
little way from the house, what should run across the road but a rat,
which sat down just inside the hedge and looked at him. “What a pity,”
he said out loud. “It’s no use my trying to catch him alone, for he’s
sure to get away; but if Pincher had been with me, we would have hunted
him down together.”
“Then you would have done very wrong,” said the rat, as he peeped at
little Tommy Smith through the hedge. “You are a naughty boy yourself,
and you teach Pincher to be a naughty dog.”
“What!” said Tommy Smith; “then can you talk as well as the frog and
toad?”
“Of course I can,” the rat answered; “and I think if I were to talk to
you for a little while as they did, you would not wish to hurt _me_ any
more either. I am sure I am just as clever as a frog or a toad.”
“Can you change your skin like them?” said Tommy Smith.
“_My_ skin never wants changing,” said the rat; “but there are many
other things I can do which are quite as clever as that.”
“Well, do some of them,” said Tommy Smith.
“I will,” said the rat, “but not now. I can do things much better at
night, and I prefer being indoors. To-night, when everybody is in bed
and asleep, and the house is quiet, I will come to your room and wake
you up. We can talk without being disturbed then, and I will soon teach
you what a clever animal I am.”
“I wonder what you will have to tell me,” said Tommy Smith. “But say
what you will, I believe that rats were only made to be killed.”
The rat looked _very_ angry. “They have as much right to be alive as
little boys have,” he said. “But good-bye for the present,” and he
scampered away.
Tommy Smith walked on, and when he had gone some little way, he saw
a number of rooks walking about a field. There was a haystack in the
field, and he thought that perhaps if he were to get behind it and wait
there for a little while, some of the rooks would come near enough for
him to throw a stone at them. So he put several stones in his pocket,
and then, with one in his hand, he began to walk towards the haystack.
When he got there, he sat down behind it, and peeped cautiously round
the corner. Yes, the rooks were still there, and some of them were
coming nearer. “Oh,” thought Tommy Smith (but I think he must have
thought it aloud), “I have only to wait a little while, and then,
perhaps, I shall be able to kill one.”
“For shame!” said a voice close to him.
Tommy Smith looked all about, but he saw no one. “Who was that?” he
said.
“Oh, fie!” said the voice. “What? kill a poor rook? What a wicked,
wicked thing to do!”
Tommy Smith thought that there must be someone on the other side of the
haystack, so he went there to see; but he found no one. Then he walked
all round it, but nobody was there. But the rooks had seen him as he
went round the haystack, and they all flew away. Then the same voice
(it was rather a hoarse one) said, “Ah! now they are gone; so you will
not be able to kill any of them.”
“Who are you?” said Tommy Smith. “I hear you, but I cannot see
anybody;” and, indeed, he began to feel rather frightened.
“If I show myself, will you promise not to hurt me?” said the hoarse
voice.
“Yes, I will,” said Tommy Smith.
“Very well, then. Throw away that stone you have in your hand, and the
ones in your pocket as well.”
Tommy Smith did this, and then, what should he see, standing on the
very top of the haystack, but a large black rook. “Why, where were
you?” he said. “I did not see you there when I looked.”
“No,” the rook said; “I hid myself under a little loose hay, for I did
not want a stone thrown at me. I saw you coming, and I knew very well
what you wanted to do, so I thought I would wait till you came, and
then give you a good talking to. And, indeed, a naughty boy like you,
who wants to kill rooks, _ought_ to be scolded.”
“I don’t see why it is so naughty,” answered Tommy Smith; “I have
always thrown stones at the rooks, and nobody has ever told me not to.”
“That is just why _I_ have come to tell you how wrong it is,” said the
rook. “Would you like anybody to throw stones at you?”
Tommy Smith had to confess that he would not like _that_ at all.
“Then, do you not know,” the rook went on, looking very grave, “that
you ought to do the same to other people that you would like other
people to do to you? Have not your father and mother taught you that?”
“Oh yes, they have,” said Tommy Smith; “but I don’t think they meant
animals.”
“They ought to have meant them,” said the rook, “whether they did or
not, for animals have feelings as well as human beings. If you are kind
to them, they are happy; but if you are unkind to them and hurt them,
then they are unhappy. An animal, you know, is a living being like
yourself, and surely it is better to make any living being happy than
to make it unhappy.”
Tommy Smith looked rather ashamed when he heard this, and did not quite
know what to say. He thought the rook spoke as if he were preaching a
sermon, and then he remembered having heard some old country people
talk of “Parson Rook.” Still, what he _said_ seemed to be sensible, and
all _he_ could say, at last, as an answer was, “Oh, it’s all very well,
but you know you rooks do a great deal of harm.”
“That shows how little you know about us,” answered the rook. “We do
not do harm, but good; and if the farmers knew how much good we did
them, they would think us their best friends.”
“Why, what good _do_ you do them?” said Tommy Smith. “I always thought
that you ate their corn.”
“Perhaps we may eat a little of it,” the rook said; “that is only fair,
for if it were not for us, the farmer would have very little corn or
anything else. I am sure, at least, that he would have scarcely any
potatoes.”
“Oh! but why wouldn’t he?” said Tommy Smith.
“I will explain it to you,” said the rook. “So now listen, because you
are going to learn something. There is an insect which you must often
have seen, for it is very common in the springtime. It is about the
size of a very large humble-bee, and it has wings too, but you would
not think it had at first, for they are hidden under a pair of smooth,
brown covers, which are called shards. In the daytime it sits upon a
tree or a bush, or sometimes you may see it crawling along a dusty
road. But in the evening it begins to fly about with a humming noise.
This insect is called the cockchafer. The mother cockchafer lays her
eggs in the ground, and, after a few weeks, there comes out of each egg
something which you would not think was a cockchafer at all, because it
is so different. It has a yellow head and a long white body, which is
bent at the end in the shape of a hook. On the front part of its body
it has three pairs of legs, like a caterpillar’s, only they are very
small; but behind, it has no legs at all. It has a very strong pair of
jaws, and with these it cuts through the roots of the grass and corn
and wheat under which it lies, for these are the things on which it
feeds. There is hardly anything which the farmer plants, and would like
to see grow, that this grub or caterpillar (for that is what it is)
does not eat and destroy; but what it likes best of all is the potato.
“The cockchafer-grub lies in the ground for four years before it turns
into a real cockchafer, and all this time it keeps growing larger and
larger; and, of course, the larger it grows, the more it eats and the
more harm it does. Now if there were no one to kill this great, greedy
thing, I don’t know what the farmers would do, for all their crops
would be spoilt. But we rooks kill them, and eat them too, for they
are very nice, and we like them very much. We eat them for breakfast,
and dinner, and supper, so you can think what a lot of them we eat in
the day. When you see us walking about over the fields, we are looking
for these great white things, and, whenever we give a dig into the
ground with our beaks, you may be almost sure that we have either
found one of them or something else which does harm too. When the
fields are ploughed, a great many grubs and worms are turned up by the
ploughshare, and then you may see us following the plough, and walking
along in the furrow it has made, so as to pick up all we can get. So
think what a lot of good we must do, and remember that the boy who
kills a rook is doing harm to somebody’s corn, or wheat, or potatoes.”
“I do not want to do that,” said Tommy Smith.
“Of course not,” said the rook; “so you must not throw stones at us any
more.”
“I won’t, then,” said Tommy Smith. “But why do the farmers shoot you,
if you do them so much good?”
“You may well ask,” the rook answered. “They ought to be ashamed of
themselves. I will tell you something about that. Once upon a time some
farmers thought they would kill us all because we stole their corn; so
they all went out together with their guns, and whenever they saw any
of us, they fired at us and killed us, until, at last, there was not a
rook left in the whole country; for all those that had not been shot
had flown away. The farmers were so glad, for they thought that next
year they would have a much better harvest. But they were quite wrong,
for, instead of having a better harvest, they had hardly any harvest
at all. The slugs and the caterpillars, and, above all, the great,
hungry cockchafer-grubs, had eaten almost everything up; for, you see,
there were no hungry rooks to eat _them_. The little corn we used
to take from the farmers they could very well have spared, but now,
without us, they found that they had lost much more than they could
spare. Then the farmers saw how foolish they had been, and they were
very sorry, and did all they could to get the rooks to come back again;
and when they did come back, they took care not to shoot them any more.”
Tommy Smith was very interested in this story which the rook told him,
and he was just going to ask where it all happened, and whether it was
near where he lived or a long way away, when the rook said, “Well, I
must be flapping” (just as an old gentleman might say, “Well, I must be
jogging”); “there is a meeting this afternoon which I ought to attend.”
“A meeting!” Tommy Smith said, feeling quite surprised.
“Certainly,” replied the rook. “Why not? I belong to a civilised
community, so, of course, there are meetings. I should be sorry not to
go to _some_ of them.”
It seemed very funny to Tommy Smith that birds should have meetings as
well as men. “But, perhaps,” he thought, “it is not quite the same kind
of thing.” Only he didn’t like to _say_ this, in case the rook should
be offended, so he only asked, “What sort of a meeting is it that you
are going to, Mr. Rook?”
“A very important one,” the rook answered. “It is a meeting to try
someone who is accused of having done something wrong.”
“Why, then, it is a trial,” said Tommy Smith. “But do rooks have
trials?”
“Of course,” said the rook. “Have I not just said that we are a
civilised community? We are not _wild_ birds. Amongst civilised people,
when someone is accused of doing wrong, he is tried for it, is he not?”
“Oh yes!” said Tommy Smith. “If he is a man, he is.”
“If he is a man, men try him,” said the rook; “but if he is a rook,
rooks do.”
“But what do you do if you find him guilty?” said Tommy Smith.
“Why, we punish him, to be sure,” said the rook; “and if he has been
_very_ wicked, we peck him to death.”
“Oh, but that is very cruel,” said Tommy Smith. He forgot that he had
seen _innocent_ rooks _shot_ without thinking it cruel at all.
“Not more cruel than hanging a man,” the rook answered. “Do you think
it is?” and Tommy Smith couldn’t say that he did. He thought he would
very much like to see this trial that the rook was going to. “Oh, Mr.
Rook,” he said, “do let me go with you.” But the rook said, “Oh no!
that would never do. No men are allowed at our trials. There are no
rooks at yours, you know.”
“No,” said Tommy Smith; “but that is because”—
“Never mind why it is,” interrupted the rook; “no doubt there is some
good reason, and we have our reasons too. We could not try a rook
properly if we thought a man was watching us. It would make us nervous.
Sometimes (but not very often) a man has watched us without our knowing
it, and then he has told everybody about our wonderful trials. But
people have not believed him; and other men, who sit at home and see
very little, and only believe what they see, have written to say it was
all nonsense. But now, when they tell _you_ it is all nonsense, _you_
will not believe _them_, because a rook himself has told you it is all
true.”
“Oh yes, and I believe it,” said Tommy Smith. “But do tell me what the
rook you are going to try has done.”
“I cannot tell you that till we have tried him,” said the rook, “for
perhaps it may not be true after all. As yet, I do not even know what
he is accused of. Perhaps it is of stealing the sticks from another
rook’s nest to make his own with. Perhaps it is of something even
worse than that. But this you may be sure of, that if we _do_ peck
him to death, it will be because he has behaved himself in a manner
totally unworthy of a rook. Now I really must go, or I shall be late.
Good-bye,—and, let me see, I think you promised never to throw stones
at rooks again.”
“Oh no!” said Tommy Smith, “I promise not to.”
“Or to shoot us when you grow up,” said the rook, just turning his head
round as he was preparing to fly.
“Oh no! indeed, I won’t,” said Tommy Smith; and the rook flew away with
a loud caw of pleasure.
[Illustration: “I SHALL KEEP AWAKE TILL THE RAT COMES”]
CHAPTER IV.
THE RAT
“_The rat is a king. Tommy Smith has a peep
At his palace: but is he awake or asleep?_”
“I SEE you,” said the rat, as Tommy Smith passed through the yard of
his father’s house. “I see you, but it is not the right time yet. Wait
till to-night.”
So all that day Tommy Smith kept thinking of what the rat had promised;
and when his bedtime came, instead of wanting to stay up longer, as
he usually did, he was quite pleased to go, and went upstairs without
making any fuss. “Now,” thought he, as he made himself nice and snug in
bed, “I shall keep awake till the rat comes. I am not at all sleepy. I
can see the branch of the cedar tree by the window shaking in the wind,
and I can hear the clock ticking on the staircase. ‘Tick, tick—tick,
tick,’—I wonder if it gets tired of saying that all day long, and all
night long, too, without ever once stopping,—unless they don’t wind
it up. ‘Tick, tick—tick, tick.’ If I keep on counting it, I shan’t go
to sleep. ‘Tick, tick—tick, tick—tick, tick—tick—squeak!’”
“What was that?” said Tommy Smith, as he sat up in bed. “That wasn’t
the clock;” and then, all at once, the old clock on the stairs struck
one. “One? Then it must be wrong. When I got into bed it was only”—
“It is quite right,” said a squeaky little voice close to Tommy Smith’s
ear, “I don’t know what time it was when you got into bed, but you have
been asleep for a good many hours; and now it is one in the morning,
which is what _I_ call a nice, comfortable time.”
“I suppose you are the rat,” said Tommy Smith, rubbing his eyes.
“Yes, I am,” the same voice answered. “But it is too dark for you to
see me here. Get up, and put on some of your clothes, and then we will
come down to the kitchen. The fire is not quite out, and you can put a
few more sticks on it. Then you will be able to see me as well as I can
see you now, and we can talk together comfortably.”
[Illustration: PAT, PAT, PAT. “DO YOU HEAR?”]
“But can you see in the dark?” said Tommy Smith, whilst he sat on the
bed and began to put on his stockings.
“Oh yes,” the rat answered; “just as well as I can in the light.”
“I wish I could,” said Tommy Smith, “for I can’t see _you_ at all.”
“Of course not,” said the rat. “So, you see, it has not taken a _very_
long time to find out something which I can do, but you can’t. Well,
you are ready now, so come along. You will be able to follow me, for
I will pat the floor just in front of you with my tail,—and that is
another thing which you couldn’t do, even if you were to try for a very
long time.”
“Because _I_ haven’t got a tail,” said Tommy Smith.
“That is one reason,” the rat answered; “but you can’t be sure you
could do it even if you had one. It might be too short, you know. Now,
come along.” Pat, pat, pat. “Do you hear?”
Tommy Smith heard quite plainly, and he followed the rat through the
door, and down the stairs, and right into the kitchen. The fire was
still alight, as the rat had said. There were some sticks lying in the
fender, and Tommy Smith put some of them on to make it burn up. Then
there was a blaze of light, and he could see the rat sitting up on his
hind legs, and holding his front paws close to the bars so as to warm
them.
“Now,” the rat said, “we will begin at once. I promised to show you
that I could do some clever things as well as the frog and toad. Do you
see that bottle of oil standing there on the dresser?”
“Oh yes, I see it,” said Tommy Smith.
“Well,” the rat went on, “I should like to taste a little of it. But
how do you suppose I am to get at it?”
“Why, by knocking it over,” said Tommy Smith at once. “That is the only
way that I can see.”
“Fie!” said the rat. “That may be _your_ way of drinking oil, but _I_
should be ashamed to make such a mess. _I_ am a rat, and I like to do
things in a proper manner.”
Tommy Smith felt a little offended at this, and he said, “I never knock
a bottle over when I want to get oil or anything else out of it, for
_I_ am a little boy, and have a pair of hands to lift it up with, and
pour what is in it out of it. But you have no hands, and you cannot get
your head into it, because the neck is too narrow, and your tongue is
not long enough to reach down to where the oil is. So I don’t see what
you can do, unless you knock it over.”
“Fie!” said the rat again. “Well, you shall soon see what I can do.”
And almost as he said this, he was on the dresser, and from there he
gave a little jump on to the window-sill, and sat down, with his long
tail hanging over the edge of it. Now the neck of the bottle came
almost up to the edge of the window-sill, and the rat’s tail was as
long as the bottle.
“Oh, I see!” cried Tommy Smith.
“You will in a minute,” said the rat, and he drew up his tail, and
began to feel about with the tip of it till he had got it right inside
the mouth of the bottle. Then he let it down again until it was dipped
more than an inch deep into the oil at the bottom—for the bottle was
not quite half full.
“Oh, how clever!” cried Tommy Smith, clapping his hands.
“I should think so,” said the rat, as he drew out his tail, and then,
putting the end of it to his mouth, he began to lick off the delicious
oil. “You say that I have not a pair of hands,” he went on. “That is
true, but you see I have a tail, and I make it do just as well.”
“So you do,” said Tommy Smith; “and I see that you are a very clever
animal indeed.”
“We are clever in many other ways besides that,” said the rat. “Oil,
you know, is not the only thing which we care about. We like eggs for
breakfast, just as much as you do, and when we find any, we take them
to our holes, even if they are a long way off. Now, how do you think we
do that?”
“Let me see,” said Tommy Smith. “You have no hands, and I don’t think
you could carry an egg in your tail. I think you must push it in front
of you with your nose and paws.”
“Oh, we can do that, of course,” said the rat, “but it takes so long,
and, besides, the eggs might get broken. We have better ways than that.
Sometimes, if there are a great many of us, we all sit in a row, and
pass the eggs along from one to the other in our fore-paws. But we
have another way which is cleverer still, and as there is a basket of
eggs in that cupboard there, I don’t mind showing it you; for, between
ourselves, when we do _that_ trick, we like to have a little boy in the
kitchen at nights to look at us. But, first, I must call a friend of
mine.” The rat then gave rather a loud squeak, and out another rat came
running; but Tommy Smith didn’t see where it came from.
“What is it?” said the second rat.
“Oh, I want to show little Tommy Smith how we carry eggs about,” said
the first rat.
“Very well,” said the second rat. “Come along.” And they both scampered
into the cupboard together. (The door of the cupboard was half open.
_I_ think it ought to have been shut.)
Very soon the two rats came out again, but whatever do you think they
were doing? Why, one of them was on his back, and the other one was
dragging him along the floor by his tail, which he had in his mouth.
But what was that white thing which the rat who was being dragged
along was holding? Was it an egg? Yes, indeed it was; and he was
holding it very tightly with all his four feet, so that it was pressed
up against his body, and didn’t slip at all.
Tommy Smith could hardly believe his eyes. “Is that how you do it?” he
cried. “I see. One rat holds the egg, and the other pulls him along by
the tail.”
“Of course he does,” said the rat. “He pulls him and the egg too.”
“_Well_,” Tommy Smith said, “of all the clever things I have _ever_
seen, I think that is the cleverest. But where are you going with it?”
Yes, it was easy to ask, but there was no one to answer him; for both
the little rats were gone all of a sudden,—and, what is more, the egg
was gone too. “That will be one egg less for breakfast,” thought Tommy
Smith to himself. “I wonder that I didn’t think of that before. Ah, Mr.
Rat,” he called out, “you may be very clever, but you are a thief, for
all that. That egg which you have just taken away belongs to me. I mean
it belongs to my father and mother. I call that stealing.”
“Oh, do you?” said the rat, for he had come out of his hole again.
“Then just let me ask you one question. Who laid that egg?”
“Why, the hen did, of course,” answered Tommy Smith.
“Oh, did she?” said the rat. “Then I suppose your father, or someone
else, took it away from her, and _I_ call _that_ stealing.”
“Oh no,” said Tommy Smith; “I don’t think it is.”
“Don’t you?” said the rat. “Well, you had better ask the hen what _she_
thinks. I feel sure she would agree with me.”
Tommy Smith felt certain that the rat was wrong, and that the egg had
not been stolen. Still, he thought he had better not ask the hen;
and, whilst he was considering what he should say, the rat went on
with—“There are other things we rats do which are quite as clever as
what you have just seen. But, perhaps, if I were to show them you, you
would make some other rude remark about stealing.”
“Perhaps I should,” Tommy Smith answered; “and, besides, I feel very
sleepy, and should like to go upstairs to bed again.”
As he said this, he yawned, and looked straight into the fire; but,
dear me, what _was_ happening there? The coals in it seemed to be
getting larger and larger, till they looked like the sides of great red
mountains, and the spaces between them were like great caves, so deep
that Tommy Smith could not see to the bottom of them. In and out of
these caves, and all down the sides of the red mountains, hundreds of
rats were running, and they all met each other in the centre of—what?
Not of the fireplace. Of course not, for they would have been burnt.
Nor of the kitchen either. There was no kitchen now. It had all
disappeared. It was in the centre of a great hall, or amphitheatre,
that Tommy Smith stood now; and when he looked round him, he saw only
those great rugged mountains, which seemed to make its walls on every
side. He looked up but he could see nothing. There was neither sun, nor
moon, nor stars, yet everything was lit up with a strange light, which
seemed to Tommy Smith like the red glow of the fire, though he couldn’t
see the fire any more. It had gone with the kitchen.
“Where am I?” he cried.
“In the great underground store-cupboard of the rats,” said a voice
close beside him; and, looking round, he saw the same rat who had come
up into his bedroom, and taken him down to the kitchen, and shown him
his clever tricks.
Yes, he was the same rat,—but how different he looked! On his head
was a yellow crown, which was either of gold, or _else_ it must have
been cut out of a cheese-paring; and in his right fore-paw he held
his sceptre, which looked _exactly_ like a delicate spring-onion. He
had a necklace of the finest peas round his neck, from which a lovely
green bean hung as a pendant upon his breast, and his tail was twisted
into beautiful _rings_. “I am the king of the rats,” he said, “and
all the other rats are my subjects. Those great caves which you see
in the sides of the mountains are so many passages that lead into all
the kitchens of the world. Through them we bring all the good things
that we find in the kitchens, and larders, and pantries, and then
we feast on them here in our own palace; for a rat’s palace is his
store-cupboard. See!” And with this the rat king struck his sceptre
on the ground, and at once all the rats left off scampering about,
and formed themselves into a great many long lines, which stretched
from the mouths of all the caves right into the very middle of that
wonderful place. There they all sat upright, side by side, waiting
to be told what to do. Then the king of the rats waved his sceptre
three times round his head, and called out, “Supper.” Immediately
all kinds of things that are good for rats to eat, such as bits of
cheese, scraps of bread or toast, beans, onions, bacon, potatoes,
apples, biscuits,—everything of that kind that you can possibly think
of (besides _some_ things that you _can’t_ possibly think of), began
to pour out from all the great caves, and to fly like lightning from
rat to rat down all the long lines. One rat seized something in his
fore-paws and passed it on to another, and that one to the next, so
quickly that it made Tommy Smith quite giddy to look at it; and he
hardly knew what was happening, till all at once there was an immense
heap of provisions piled up in the very centre of the floor. Then the
king of the rats climbed up to the top of the heap, and called out,
“Take your places,” and in a moment all the other rats came scampering
up, and sat in a large circle round the great heap of provisions.
“Begin!” said the king; and every rat made a leap forward, and fixed
his teeth into the first piece of bread, or cheese, or toast, or bacon,
that he could get hold of, and there was _such_ a noise of nibbling,
and gnawing, and scratching, and squeaking. Tommy Smith was quite
frightened, and put his fingers to his ears.
[Illustration: “BITE HIM!”]
“What are you doing that for?” said the king of the rats. “Didn’t you
hear me tell you to begin?”
“But I don’t want to begin,” said Tommy Smith.
“Why not?” said the king; and all the other rats stopped eating, and
said, “Why not?”
“Because I don’t like eating in the night,” Tommy Smith answered; “and,
besides, I can’t eat what rats eat.”
At this there was a great commotion, and the king of the rats cried
out, “Bite him!” in a very loud and shrill voice.
Oh, how fast little Tommy Smith ran! “The caves!” he thought. “They
lead to all the kitchens of the world, so one of them must lead to
ours.” He got to one, but the rats were close behind him. He could see
their eyes shining in the dark as he looked back. “Oh dear!” he said;
“I shall be caught. It’s getting narrower and narrower, and, of course,
it must be a rat’s hole at the other end. Ah, there! I’m stuck, and
I shall be bitten all over.” As he said this, he kicked and squeezed
as hard as he could, and, to his great surprise, he found that the
sides of the rat-hole were quite soft—in fact, they felt very like
bedclothes; and the next moment his head was on his own pillow, and the
old clock on the staircase struck two.
“Well, good-night,” said a squeaky little voice, that he seemed to have
heard before. “If you _will_ go to sleep, I can’t help it, but I think
the way in which little boys turn night into day is quite dreadful.”
The next time Tommy Smith heard the old clock on the stairs, it was
striking eight, so, of course, it was broad daylight, and high time
to get up. “What a funny dream I have had,” he said, as he rubbed his
eyes; “or did the rat really come, as he said he would?” Then, after
thinking a little, he said to himself, “Rats are certainly very clever
animals, and I don’t think I’ll kill another, even if they do steal a
few things. At anyrate, _I_ won’t hurt _them_ until _they_ hurt _me_.”
CHAPTER V.
THE HARE
“_When you’ve read through this chapter, I’m sure you’ll declare
That you hate everybody who hunts the poor hare._”
WHAT a beautiful day it was!
How bright the sun shone, and how pleasantly the birds were
singing,—for it was the lovely season of spring. All the air was full
of melody, so that it seemed to Tommy Smith as if he had somehow got
inside a very large musical box, which _would_ keep on playing. And so
he had, _really_, only it was Nature’s great musical box,—the music
was immortal, and the works were alive.
Far up in the sky the lark was doing his very best to please little
Tommy Smith and everybody else, for he made whoever heard him feel
happier than they had felt before. But what was little Tommy Smith
doing to show how grateful he was to the bird that gave him so much
pleasure? Why, I am sorry to say that he was trying to find the
poor lark’s nest, so that he might take away the eggs which were in
it,—those eggs which the mother lark had been taking so much trouble
to keep warm, so that little baby larks might come out of them, which
she meant to feed and take care of till they were grown up, and could
fly and sing like herself. It was the thought of those eggs, and of
the mother bird sitting upon them, which made the lark himself sing so
gladly up in the air, for, when he looked down, he fancied he could
see them; and he knew that there was someone waiting for him there who
would be glad to see him again, when he came down to roost. But Tommy
Smith did not think of this, for nobody had talked to him about it. All
he thought of was how he could get the eggs, so that he could take them
away with him, and show them to other boys.
Ah! what was that? How gracefully the cowslips waved, and up went a
lark into the sky; and as he rose he seemed to shake a song out of his
wings. Tommy Smith thought there was sure to be a nest close to where
he had risen, so he went to look; but before he had got to the place,
away went something—something brown like a lark, but ever so much
larger, and, instead of flying, it galloped along over the ground; so,
you see, it was not a bird at all. What was it? Tommy Smith knew well
enough, for he had often seen such an animal before. “Ha!” he cried.
“Puss! puss! A hare! a hare!” and he sent the stick which he had in his
hand whizzing after it; but, I am glad to say, he did not hit it.
The hare did not seem so very frightened. Perhaps he knew that he could
run away faster than any stick thrown by a little boy could come after
him. At anyrate, before he had gone far, he stopped, and then he turned
round, and raised himself right up, almost on his hind legs, and looked
back at Tommy Smith.
“Well,” he said, as Tommy Smith came up; “you see you cannot catch me.”
“No,” said Tommy Smith—he was getting quite accustomed to having talks
with animals,—“you run too quickly.”
“For my part,” said the hare, “I wonder how any little boy who has a
kind heart can like to tease and frighten a poor, timid animal who is
persecuted in so many ways as I am.”
“What do you mean by ‘persecuted’?” said Tommy Smith. “That is a word
which I don’t understand. It is too long for me.”
“It is a great pity,” the hare went on, “that a little boy should
always be _doing_ something which he does not know the word for. To
‘persecute’ people is to be very cruel to them, and whenever you hurt,
or annoy, or frighten, or ill-treat any of us animals, then you are
persecuting us.”
“If I had known that,” said Tommy Smith, “I would not have done it.”
“Then you mustn’t do it any more,” said the hare; “and especially not
to me, because I have so many enemies who are always trying to injure
me.”
“Why, what enemies have you?” said Tommy Smith.
“Plenty,” the hare said. “First, there is that wicked animal the fox,
who is always ready to kill and eat me whenever he has the chance.
He is very cunning, and, as he knows he cannot run fast enough to
catch me, he tries all sorts of ways to pounce upon me when I am not
expecting it. Sometimes he will wait by a hole in the hedge that he has
seen me go through, and when I come to it again, he springs out and
seizes me with his teeth and kills me, for he is much stronger than I
am. Then sometimes one fox will chase me past a place where another fox
is hiding, and then the fox that was hiding jumps out at me, and they
both eat me together.”
“How wicked!” said Tommy Smith.
“Is it not?” said the hare. “And then there is that horrid little
creature the weasel. He follows me about till he catches me, and then
he bites me in the throat, so that I bleed to death.”
“That _is_ horrid of him,” said Tommy Smith. “But there is one thing
which I cannot understand. The weasel does not go so very fast, and you
can run faster than a horse. I am sure that if you were to run away, he
would never be able to catch you.”
“You don’t know what it is,” said the hare. “That odious little animal
follows me about, and never leaves off. You see, wherever I go I leave
a smell behind me.”
“Do you?” said Tommy Smith. “That seems very funny. Why, I am close to
you, and I don’t smell anything.”
“Little boys cannot smell nearly as well as animals,” said the hare.
“However, I don’t _quite_ understand it myself, for I am sure I am as
clean as any animal can be, and there is nothing nasty about me; and
yet whenever my feet touch the ground, they leave a smell upon it. That
is my _scent_; but other animals have their scent too as well as I, so
I needn’t mind about it. Now the weasel has a very good nose, so that
he is able to follow the scent that I have left on the ground, until he
comes to where I am; and, besides, when I know that that cruel little
animal is following me, I get so frightened that I cannot run away, as
I would from you, or from a fox, or a dog. And so he comes up and kills
me.”
“Poor hare!” said Tommy Smith. “I feel very sorry for you. I am afraid
that you are not clever like other animals, or else you would escape
and get away more often. The rat would run down a hole, I am sure, and
so would the rabbit. I have often seen him do it.”
“Pray do not compare me to the rabbit,” said the hare. “I have twice
as much sense as he has, and I can tell you that you make a great
mistake if you think I am not clever, for I am very clever indeed, as
I will soon show you. If you will follow me a few steps, I will take
you to the place where I was lying when you frightened me out of it.
See, here it is. Look how nicely the grass is pressed downward and
bent back on each side, so that it makes a pretty little bower for me
to rest in when I am tired of running about. That is better, I think,
than a mere hole in the ground; and, for my part, I look upon burrowing
as a very foolish habit. _I_ prefer fresh air, and I think that it is
much nicer to see all about one than to live in the dark. This little
bower of mine is what people call my _form_, and I am so fond of it
that, however often I am driven away, I always come back to it again.
And now, how do you think I get into this form of mine? I have told you
that wherever I go I leave a scent upon the ground, so if I just came
to my form and walked into it, any animal that crossed my scent would
be able to follow it till he came to where I was. Now, what do you
think I do to prevent this?”
“I don’t know,” said Tommy Smith, after he had thought a little; “I
don’t see how you can prevent it, for you must come to your form on
your feet,—you cannot fly.”
“No,” said the hare; “but I can jump. Look!” And he gave several leaps
into the air, which made Tommy Smith clap his hands and call out,
“Bravo! how well you do it!”
“Now,” said the hare, “when I am coming back to my form, I leap first
to this side and then to that side, and then I make a very big jump
indeed, and down I come in my own house. Of course, by doing this, I
make it much more difficult for a fox or a weasel to smell where I have
been, for it is only where my feet touch the ground that I leave my
scent upon it.”
“Ah, I see,” cried Tommy Smith; “so, when you make long jumps, your
feet will not touch the ground at so many places as they would if you
only just ran along it.”
“Of course not,” said the hare.
“And then there will not be so many places for a dog or a fox to smell
where you have been,” said Tommy Smith.
“Not nearly so many,” said the hare; “that is the reason why I do it.
I hope you think _that_ quite as clever as just running down a hole,
which is what the rat and the rabbit do.”
“I think it very clever, indeed,” said Tommy Smith; “and I see now that
you are a clever animal.”
“I have other ways of escaping when I am chased,” the hare went on;
“and I think, when you have heard them, you will confess they are quite
as clever as anything which that conceited animal, the rat, has shown
you. As to the rabbit, I say nothing. He is a relation of mine, and we
have always been friendly. But the brains are not on _his_ side of the
family.”
“Please go on, Mr. Hare,” said Tommy Smith. “I should like to hear all
you can tell me.”
[Illustration: ALL HAPPY (EXCEPT THE HARE)]
“Well,” the hare said, “I have told you about the fox and the weasel,
but they are not my only enemies. I have others—horses and dogs, and,
worst of all, hard-hearted men and women, who ride the horses, and
teach the dogs to run after me, and to catch me. It is a pretty sight
to see them all meet together in some field or lane. First one rides
up, and then another, until there are quite a number. They laugh and
talk whilst they wait for the huntsman to come with his pack of hounds.
All are merry and light-hearted; even the horses neigh, they are in
such spirits. Does it not seem funny that one creature’s wretchedness
should make so many creatures happy? And there are women—ladies,
some of them quite young, and _so_ pretty—like angels. I have seen
them smile as if they could not hurt any living thing. You would have
thought that they had come to stroke me, instead of to hunt me to
death. But I know better. They are not to be trusted. They have soft
cheeks, and soft eyes, and soft looks, but their hearts are hard.
“At last, up comes the huntsman, in his green coat and black velvet
cap. He cracks his whip, and the dogs leap and bark around him—_such_
a noise! I hear it all as I lie crouched in my form, and my heart beats
with terror. But I cannot lie there long, for now they are coming
towards me. I start up, and run for my life. Away I go, one poor, timid
animal, who never hurt anyone, and after me come men and women, boys
and girls, horses and dogs, all happy, and all thinking it the finest
thing in the world to hunt and to kill—a hare.”
“Are the dogs greyhounds?” said Tommy Smith.
“No,” answered the hare; “the dogs I am talking about now are not
greyhounds, but beagles. They hunt me by scent, but the greyhound hunts
me by sight, for he runs so fast that he can always see me.”
“Does he run as fast as you do?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Yes, indeed,” said the hare; “he runs much faster, but he does not
always catch me, for all that. When he is close behind me, I stop all
of a sudden, and crouch flat on the ground. The greyhound cannot stop
himself so quickly, for he is not so clever as I am. He runs right over
me, and it is several seconds before he can turn round again. But _I_
turn round as soon as he has passed me, and then I run as fast as I can
the other way, so that, when he starts after me again, he is a good
way behind. When he catches up to me, I do the same thing again. This
clever trick of mine is called _doubling_, and I AM so proud of it,
for if it was not for that, the greyhound would catch me directly.”
“Then does he never catch you?” said Tommy Smith.
“He never has yet,” said the hare. “But I have other ways of getting
away from him, as well as from other dogs, and I will tell you some of
them. Sometimes I run under a gate. The dogs are too big to do this, so
they are obliged to jump over it. Then, when they are near me, on the
other side I double, in the way I told you, run as fast as I can back
to the gate, and go under it again. Of course they have to jump over it
a second time, and in this way I keep running under the gate and making
them jump over it until they are quite tired, for, of course, it is
more tiring to jump over anything than only to run under it. At last,
when they are too tired to run any more, I slip quietly through a hedge
and gallop away.”
“Bravo!” cried Tommy Smith.
The hare looked very pleased, and said, “I see that you are not at all
a stupid boy, so I will tell you something else. Now, supposing you
were being chased across the fields by a lot of dogs, and you were to
come to a flock of sheep, what would you do?”
Tommy Smith thought a little, and then he said, “I think I should call
out to the shepherd and ask him to help me.”
“Yes, and I daresay he _would_ help _you_,” said the hare, “for he
would remember the time when _he_ was a little boy, and he would feel
sorry for you. But he would not feel sorry for _me_, who am only a
little hare (he was never _that_, you know). He would throw his stick
at me, as you did, and then he would do all he could to help the dogs
to catch me. No, it is not the shepherd that I should ask to help me,
but the sheep—_they_ are so gentle,—and when I came to them I should
run right into the middle of them, and then the dogs would not be able
to find me.”
“But would not the dogs follow you in amongst the sheep and catch you
there?” said Tommy Smith.
“No,” said the hare, “they would not be able to; for the flock would
keep together, so that the dogs could only run round the outside of it.
But _I_ should keep right in the middle, and wherever the sheep went,
I should go with them; _I_ could run between their feet, you know.
Besides, the dogs would not be able to see me amongst so many sheep.”
“No,” said Tommy Smith. “But could not they still follow you by your
scent?”
“No, indeed, they could not,” said the hare; “for, you see, sheep have
a stronger scent than I have, and they would put down their feet just
in the very place where I had put down mine, and then their scent would
hide mine. So, you see, by hiding amongst a flock of sheep I should
save my life, for the dogs would not be able either to see me, or smell
me, or to follow me, even if they could.”
“Have you ever done it?” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh yes!” said the hare; “and there is something else which I have
done. Sometimes when the dogs were chasing me, I have run to where I
knew another hare was sitting, and I have pushed that hare out of his
place, so that the dogs have followed _him_ instead of _me_. _I_ sat
down where _he_ had been sitting, and they all went by without finding
it out.”
“Well,” said Tommy Smith, “that may have been very clever, but I don’t
think it was at all kind to the other hare.”
The hare looked a little surprised at this, as if he had not thought
of it before. “One hare should help another, you know,” he said; “and,
besides, I daresay the dogs did not catch him after all. _He_ may have
found _another_ hare.”
Tommy Smith was just beginning with “Oh, but”—when the hare said,
“Never mind!” rather impatiently, and then he continued, “And now I am
going to tell you something which will show you that, although I am not
a large or a fierce animal, I can sometimes be revenged on those who
injure me, though they are larger and fiercer than myself.”
“Oh, do tell me,” said Tommy Smith, for the hare had paused a little,
and seemed to be thinking.
“Ah!” he began again; “how well I remember it. I was very nearly
caught that time. How fast the greyhounds ran, and how close behind
me they were! What could I do to get away? I had gone up steep hills
to tire them; and I _had_ tired them, but then I had tired myself
still more. I had run up one side of a hedge and down the other, so
that they should not see me, and then I had gone through the roughest
and thorniest part of that hedge, in hopes that they would not be
able to follow. But they had kept close after me all the time, and
now they were just at my heels. Then I doubled. Oh, how close I lay
on the ground as the greyhounds leaped over me! I saw their white
teeth, and their glaring eyes, and their red tongues lolling out of
their great open mouths. But they had missed me, and I was saved for
a little while. But where was I to run to next? There were no hedges
now; no woods, or hills, or rocky ground, nothing but smooth level
grass, which is just what greyhounds love to race over. Was there no
escape? Yes. What was that long line far away where the green grass
ended and the blue sky began? White birds were wheeling above it,
and, from beneath, came a sound as though a giant were whispering.
That was the sound of the sea, and the long line meeting the sky was
the line of the cliffs. Oh, if I could reach it! But, first, I had to
double—once—twice—three times; over me they flew, and off I darted
again. And now the line grew nearer, the white birds looked larger as
they sailed in the air, and the whispering sound was changing to a
moan—to a roar. Yes, I was close to it now, but the greyhounds were
just behind me, and their hot breath blew upon my fur. They had caught
me! No. On the very edge of the cliffs I doubled once more, and _once_
more they went over me.”
“And over the cliffs?” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes,” said the hare; “over me, and over the cliffs as well. Something
hid the sky for a moment,—a dark cloud passed above me. Then the sky
was clear again; and there were no greyhounds now. Over and over, down,
down, down they went, and were dashed to pieces on the black rocks, and
drowned in the white waves. I know they were, for I peeped over the
edge and saw it. You may ask the seagulls, if you like. They saw it
too.”
“Were they all drowned?” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes, all,” said the hare.
“And were you glad?” he asked, for it seemed to him very dreadful.
“Well,” the hare said, “I was glad to escape, of course, and so would
you have been. But yet I could not help feeling sorry for the poor
dogs, because they had been _taught_ to chase me, and it was not their
fault. Do you know who I should have liked to see fall over the cliffs
instead of them?”
“Who?” said Tommy Smith.
“The cruel, hard-hearted men who taught them,” said the hare. “It is
they who ought to have been drowned, and I am very sorry that they were
not.”
“You poor hare!” said Tommy Smith, as he stroked its soft fur, and
played with its long, pretty ears. “It is very hard that you should
always be hunted, and I do think that you are very badly treated. But
what clever ways you have of escaping! Do you know, I think you are the
cleverest animal I have had a talk with yet, and I like you very much.”
“Ah! it is all very well to say that now,” said the hare. “But who was
it that threw a stick at me?”
“I never will again,” said Tommy Smith. “You know you jumped up all of
a sudden, so that I had no time to think. But I did not come out on
purpose to throw it at you. I only wanted to find a lark’s nest, so as
to get the eggs.”
When the hare heard that, I cannot tell you how sad and grieved he
looked. “What!” he said. “Would you take the poor lark’s eggs away, and
make it unhappy? No, no; if you really like me, as you say you do, you
must promise me not to do anything so cruel as that. The lark is the
best friend I have. He sings to me as I lie in my form, and consoles me
for all my troubles. His voice cheers me too, when I am being chased by
the dogs, for he always seems to be saying, ‘You will get away; I know
you will get away.’ Then sometimes he comes down to roost quite close
to me, and we talk to each other. _He_ tells _me_ what it is like up
above the clouds, and _I_ tell _him_ all that has been going on down
here. He has _his_ trials too, for there are hawks that try to catch
_him_, just as there are greyhounds that try to catch _me_; so we sit
and comfort each other. Promise me never to be unkind to my friend the
lark.”
“I won’t hurt him,” said Tommy Smith. “And if ever I find his nest with
eggs in it, I will only just look at them and leave them there.”
“Oh, thank you,” the hare said; “and you won’t hurt me either?”
“No, indeed, I won’t,” said Tommy Smith. “Do you know, I begin to think
that it would be better not to hurt any animal.”
“Oh, much better!” said the hare, as he skipped gladly away. “Except
the fox,—and the weasel, you may hurt _him_—if you can catch him.”
He said that, of course, because he _was_ a hare, and felt prejudiced.
You must not think _I_ agree with him. Only a critic or a silly person
would think _that_.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GRASS-SNAKE AND ADDER
“_Tommy Smith has a talk with the grass-snake, and then
With the adder: they’re both as conceited as men._”
WHEN Tommy Smith had said good-bye to the hare, he thought he would
walk home through some woods which were not far off. So off he set
towards them, and as he went along he said to himself, “I know there
are a great many animals that live in the woods. Now I wonder which of
them will be the first to have a talk with me. Let me see. The pigeon
and the squirrel both live there, for I have often seen them together
on the same tree. And then there is the—” Good gracious! What was
that just gliding out from under a bush? Tommy Smith gave a start and
a jump, and well he might, for it was a large snake, perhaps three
feet long. He was so surprised that, at first, he didn’t quite know
what to do, and before he had made up his mind, it was too late to do
anything, for the snake had wriggled away into another bush. “It was
an adder,” said Tommy Smith out loud. “That, at least, is an animal
which I _ought_ to kill, because it is poisonous.”
“I beg your pardon,” said a sharp, hissing voice. “I am not an adder,
and I am _not_ poisonous.”
Tommy Smith looked all about, but he could see nothing. Still, he felt
sure that it must be the snake who had spoken, because the voice came
from the very centre of the bush into which he had seen it go. So he
answered, “Of course it is very easy for you to say that, but everybody
knows that snakes are poisonous, and, if you are not a snake, I should
just like to know what you are.”
“I did not say that I was not a _snake_,” said the voice again.
“Of course I am, but I am not an adder for all that. There are two
different kinds of snakes in this country. One is the adder, which is
poisonous, and the other is the grass-snake, which is quite harmless.
Now _I_ am the grass-snake, so if you had killed me, you would have
done something very wrong, for you would have killed a poor harmless
animal.”
“Well,” said Tommy Smith, “if that is true, I am glad I didn’t kill
you. But are you quite sure?”
“If you don’t believe _me_,” said the snake, “you must get some good
book of natural history, and there you will find it mentioned that we
grass-snakes are quite harmless. It is the great superiority which our
family have always had over that of the adder. People may call _him_ a
‘poisonous reptile,’ but they cannot speak of _us_ in that way. If they
were to, they would only show their ignorance.”
“But how am I to know which is one and which is the other?” asked Tommy
Smith.
“You will not find _that_ very difficult,” the grass-snake answered;
“and if you will promise not to hurt me, I will come out from where I
am and show you.”
Of course Tommy Smith promised (you see he was getting a much better
boy to animals than he used to be), and directly he had, the snake
came gliding out from under the bush, and lay on the ground just at
his feet. “Now”, he said, “to begin with, I am a good deal longer than
an adder. I should just like to see the adder that was three feet
long, and _I_ am an inch longer than that. No, indeed! Whenever you
see such a fine, long snake as I am, you may be sure that it is a nice
grass-snake, and not a nasty adder.”
“I won’t forget that,” said Tommy Smith. “But, I suppose, snakes grow
like other animals. How should I be able to tell you from an adder if I
were to meet you before you were three feet long?”
“Why, by my skin, to be sure!” said the grass-snake. “Look how
beautifully it is marked, and what a fine greenish colour it is. I
may well be proud of it, for a very great poet indeed has called it
‘enamelled,’ and says that it is fit for a fairy to wrap herself up in.
Think of _that_! The adder’s is quite different, only a dull, dirty
brown, which I _might_ call ugly if I were ill-natured. But I am _not_,
so I will only say that it is plain. I don’t think any fairy would like
to wrap herself in _his_ skin.”
“But are there fairies?” said Tommy Smith.
“There are, as long as you are a little boy,” said the grass-snake;
“but as soon as you are grown up there will be none.”
“How funny!” said Tommy Smith. “But do you know, Mr. Grass-Snake,
I should not like to wrap myself up in your skin, even if I could,
because it is so hard and covered with scales. And besides, how could
the fairies get into it without killing you first? I don’t suppose you
can change it as the frog and the toad do.”
“Not change it!” said the grass-snake. “And why not, pray? I should
think myself a very stupid animal if I could not do _that_. Of course I
change it, and then it looks and feels quite different to what it did
when it was on me. You see, it is only just the outer part which comes
off. That is quite thin, and I don’t think you would find it _very_
much harder than the petal of a flower. Some day, perhaps, you may
find it if you look about in the grass or the bushes; for I rub myself
against the grass or bushes to get it off.”
[Illustration: “THERE ARE THREE FROGS IN MY STOMACH AT THE MOMENT”]
“Then you do not swallow your skin as the toad does?” Tommy Smith asked.
“I should not like to do anything so nasty,” said the grass-snake
angrily, “and I wish you wouldn’t keep talking to me about frogs and
toads. They are very low animals, and only fit to be eaten.”
Tommy Smith was quite shocked when he heard this, and he said, “Take
care, Mr. Grass-Snake. Frogs and toads are very useful animals, and my
friends, too. So I won’t let you eat them.”
“That is talking nonsense,” said the grass-snake. “You can’t help my
eating them, especially frogs. Why, there are three frogs in my stomach
at this moment.”
Directly Tommy Smith heard that, he made a dart at the grass-snake,
and caught hold of him before he could get away. I don’t know what he
meant to do. Perhaps he meant to kill the poor snake, which would have
been very wrong, as you will see. But before he had time to do anything
at all, two curious things happened. One was that the snake opened his
mouth very wide indeed, and out of it came first one, then another,
and then a third frog. Yes; three large frogs came out of the snake’s
mouth, one after the other, and there they all lay on the grass. That
was one funny thing, and the other was that, as soon as Tommy Smith
caught hold of the snake, the snake began to smell in a way that was
not at all pleasant. Indeed, it was such a _very_ nasty smell that
Tommy Smith was glad to drop him, so that he got away into the bush
again.
“Ah, ha!” the snake said, as soon as he was safe, “I thought you
wouldn’t hold me very long. Just look at your hand now.”
Tommy Smith looked at his hand. It had a thick yellowish fluid on it,
which made it feel quite moist, and it was this fluid which had such
a disagreeable smell. He was very much offended with the grass-snake,
and he called out to him, “I think that is a very nasty trick to play,
indeed.”
“I thought you wouldn’t like it,” replied the grass-snake, “and that is
just why I did it. I wanted you to let me go, and, you see, you very
soon had to. I always do that when anyone catches me; and, for my
part, I think it is a very clever idea of mine.”
“But how do you do it?” asked Tommy Smith, whilst he stooped down and
wiped his hand on the grass.
“Why, I hardly know,” said the grass-snake. “It comes naturally to me.
Nobody can be cleaner or more well-behaved than I am, as long as I am
treated properly. But when I am attacked, and my life is in danger, I
do the only thing which I can do to protect myself. It is just as if
you had a bottle of something which smelt so strongly that when you
took out the cork and sprinkled it about, nobody could stay in the
room. Now I have something which smells like that, only instead of
keeping it in a bottle, I carry it under my skin, and when I want to
use it, then, instead of taking out a cork, I just open my skin, and it
comes out in little drops all over me.”
“Open your skin?” said Tommy Smith. “Why, how do you do that?”
“I don’t know _how_ I do it,” said the grass-snake, “but I _do_ do it.”
“Well,” Tommy Smith said, “however you do it, I think it is a very
nasty habit. And besides, I shouldn’t have caught hold of you if you
hadn’t told me that you had been eating frogs. I think it is very cruel
of you to eat them. Why do you do it?”
“Why do I do it?” answered the grass-snake. “Why, because I feel
hungry, to be sure. Why do you eat sheep, and oxen, and pigs, and
ducks, and fowls, and turkeys?”
“Oh! but everybody eats them,” said Tommy Smith.
“Every _snake_ eats frogs,” said the grass-snake. “We were made to eat
them, and the frogs were made for us to eat. That is my theory. It is a
good one, I feel sure, for it explains _the facts_ and makes _me_ feel
comfortable.”
“But they are so useful,” said Tommy Smith; “and they do so much good
in the garden.”
“I don’t eat them all,” said the grass-snake, “and I don’t often go
into gardens. Frogs and toads may be very useful, but perhaps if I
didn’t eat some of them there would be too many of them in the world,
and then, instead of being useful, they would be a nuisance. You see,
I don’t eat them all. I leave just as many as are wanted, as long as
_you_ don’t kill them. But if _you_ were to kill them too, then there
would be too few.”
Tommy Smith thought a little, and then he said, “Are you obliged to eat
them?”
“Of course I am,” said the grass-snake, “just as much as you are
obliged to eat beef and mutton. You would think it very hard if you
were to be killed just for eating your dinner. Then why should you want
to kill me for eating mine? No, no; take my advice, and learn this
lesson. Never kill one animal for eating another animal.”
Tommy Smith thought over this for a little, and it seemed to him to be
right. “After all,” he thought, “the frog and the toad eat insects,
and if no animal might eat any other animal, then a great many animals
would die of starvation, and that would be very dreadful.” So he said
to the grass-snake, “Well, Mr. Grass-Snake, I think you are right, and,
if you come out of your bush, I will not try to catch you any more.” So
the grass-snake came wriggling out again, and then Tommy Smith asked
him why he had brought the frogs out of his mouth after he had eaten
them.
“It was because you frightened me,” said the grass-snake. “You see,
I wanted to get away, and, with three frogs inside me, I felt rather
heavy. But as soon as the frogs were gone I was much lighter, and could
go much quicker. Now don’t you think it was a _very_ clever idea?”
“I don’t think it was a very _clean_ idea,” said Tommy Smith; “but
as you were frightened, perhaps you couldn’t help it. But now, Mr.
Grass-Snake, are there any other clever things which you can do, and
which are not quite so nasty? If there are, I should like to hear about
them.”
“I can lay eggs,” said the grass-snake, “which is more than the adder
can do.”
“But can you really lay them?” said Tommy Smith; “and do you make a
nest for them, like a bird?”
“No,” said the grass-snake. “A bird makes a nest for her eggs because
she has to sit on them, and she wants a nice, comfortable place to sit
in. Now I don’t sit on my eggs, for that is not at all necessary. I
just find a nice, warm, moist place for them, and when I have laid them
there, I go away and leave them. I have no time to sit on them like a
bird. I am much too busy.”
“But how are your eggs ever hatched?” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh,” said the grass-snake, “I am so clever that I know the heat of the
place where they lie will be enough to hatch them. So when they are
once safely laid, I don’t bother about them any more.”
“Yes,” said Tommy Smith; “but if you go away, who is there to look
after the young snakes when they come out of the egg?”
“They look after themselves,” said the grass-snake. “Birds are like
little boys and girls. They are great babies, and want someone to take
care of them whilst they are young. But we snakes are so clever that as
soon as we come into the world we can take care of ourselves, and don’t
want anyone to help us.”
“I should like to see some of your eggs,” said Tommy Smith. “What are
they like?”
“They are white,” said the grass-snake, “and they are joined together
in a long string, sometimes as many as sixteen or even twenty. So you
may think how beautiful they look, like a necklace of very large
pearls. Only they are not hard like pearls. Their shell is soft, and
not at all like the shell of a bird’s egg.”
“I _should_ like to see them,” said Tommy Smith.
“Well,” said the grass-snake, “you must look about in manure-heaps, and
then, perhaps, you will find some. That is the sort of place that I
like to lay them in.”
Tommy Smith thought that this was another nasty habit of the
grass-snake, but he didn’t like to say so, because he had said it twice
before; so, after a little while, he said, “And do you really like
being a snake, Mr. Grass-Snake?” You see he had to say something, and
he didn’t quite know what to say.
“Like it?” said the grass-snake. “Of course I do. I should be very
sorry to be anything else. Yes, we snakes have a happy life. In summer
we crawl about and eat frogs, and in winter we find some nice place to
go to sleep in.”
“Then do you sleep all the winter?” said Tommy Smith.
“Of course,” said the grass-snake. “What else is there to do? There are
no frogs in winter, and it is cold and unpleasant. The best thing is
to go to sleep, and that is what I always do.”
Now whilst Tommy Smith was talking to the grass-snake he kept looking
at the poor dead frogs that were lying on the grass, and you can think
how surprised he was when, all at once, one of them moved a little,
and then began to crawl away very slowly. Then the others moved, and
began to crawl away too. So they were not dead after all. You see,
when a snake eats a frog (or anything else), he does not chew it, as
we do, but just swallows it whole, and then sometimes the frog will
keep alive for some time inside the snake’s stomach. Tommy Smith spoke
to the frogs, but they were too faint to answer. So he took them up,
and washed them in a little ditch which was close by, and then laid
them in a nice long tuft of grass. When he had done that, he came back
to where he had left the grass-snake, but he did not find him there
again. “Where are you?” he called out. “Do you mean me?” said a voice
quite near him. It was a hissing voice, certainly, and sounded a good
deal like the grass-snake’s. But still it did not sound quite the
same, Tommy Smith thought. So he said, “I mean you, if you are the
grass-snake,” in rather a doubtful tone of voice. “No, indeed,” hissed
the voice again, “I am something better than a grass-snake. _I_ am an
adder.” And as the adder said this, he came crawling out from a little
clump of furze-bush, where he had lain hidden.
Tommy Smith saw that what the grass-snake had said was true, for the
adder’s body was shorter and of a duller colour than the grass-snake’s.
His head, too, was different. It was flatter, and swelled out more on
each side where it joined the neck, so that the neck looked smaller in
proportion to the size of the head. Altogether, Tommy Smith felt sure
that the next time he went out for a walk and saw a snake, he would be
able to tell whether it was a grass-snake or an adder. “And if it is an
adder,” he said to himself, “why, I ought to kill it.” And then he said
out loud, “Mr. Adder, you don’t seem at all afraid of me; but, do you
know, I think I ought to kill you, because you are poisonous.”
“_I_ think you ought to leave me alone because I am poisonous,” said
the adder. “For if you were to try to kill me, I should have to bite
you, and then, perhaps, _I_ should kill _you_.”
Tommy Smith did not like this remark of the adder’s at all. He began
to feel afraid himself, and he would have liked to have run away. But
he thought that if he did, the adder might attack him when his back
was turned. So he stood quite still, and only said, “Why aren’t you
harmless like the grass-snake?”
“That is not a very polite question!” said the adder in reply. “_I_
belong to the poisonous branch of the family, and I am proud to belong
to it. The grass-snake is a poor creature, and I pity him. I should
like to see anyone catch _me_ in the same way that they catch _him_. I
would soon teach them the difference between us.”
“But you do so much harm,” said Tommy Smith.
“What harm have I ever done _you_?” said the adder.
“You have not done me any harm,” said Tommy Smith, “but that is because
I have never seen you before now.”
“_You_ may never have seen _me_,” said the adder, “but _I_ have seen
_you_ very often. Sometimes I have been quite near to where you were
walking, but when I have heard you coming, I have just crawled out of
the way, and let you go by without hurting you. Now don’t you think
that was very good of me? I should just like to know what you have to
complain of.”
“You have never hurt me, I know,” said Tommy Smith. “But think how many
people you do hurt.”
“Do you know anybody that I have hurt?” asked the adder.
“No,” answered Tommy Smith, “I don’t know anybody; but I am sure you
must have hurt a great many people, because you are poisonous.”
“Well,” said the adder, “I think you might walk about a long while
asking people before you found anyone that I had done any harm to. I
never interfere with people unless they interfere with me, so I think
the best thing they can do is just to let me alone. It is true that my
two front teeth are poisonous, and that I can kill some creatures by
biting them. But these creatures are not men or women, but only mice
or small birds or frogs. You know I have to eat them, so I may just as
well kill them before I begin. The grass-snake eats _his_ frogs alive.
That is much more cruel than if he killed them first, as I do.”
“How do you kill them?” said Tommy Smith. “I suppose you sting them
with your forked tongue, and then they die.”
“Did you not hear me say that I bit them,” said the adder; “and that I
had two poisonous teeth? My tongue is not poisonous at all. There is no
more harm in it than there is in yours.”
“Oh! but, Mr. Adder,” cried Tommy Smith, “do you know I once went to
the Zoological Gardens in London, and I saw the snakes there, and
whenever one of them put out his tongue, as you do yours, the people
all said, ‘Look at its sting! Look at its sting!’”
“That is only because they were ignorant people,” said the adder, “and
did not know any better. No; it is the two long teeth in my upper jaw
that are poisonous, and, if you will just kneel down, I will open my
mouth so that you can see them, and then I can explain all about it to
you.”
Tommy Smith didn’t quite like the idea of kneeling down and putting
his face close to the mouth of the adder. He had heard of men who
put their heads inside a lion’s mouth, and he thought that this would
be almost as dangerous. However, the adder promised not to bite him,
and as he said he never _had_ bitten a little boy in the whole of
his life, and should not think of doing so without a proper reason,
he thought he might trust him. So he knelt down and looked. Then the
adder opened his mouth, and, as he did so, two little white things like
fish-bones seemed to shoot forward into the front part of it. “Those
are my two poison-fangs,” he said. “When my mouth is shut, they lie
back against my upper jaw, but as soon as I open it to bite anyone,
they shoot forward so as to be in the right place.” Tommy Smith looked
at the teeth. They were as sharp as needles and almost as thin, but
they were not straight like common needles, but curved backwards like
crochet-needles. “What curious teeth!” he said.
“Perhaps they are more curious than you think,” said the adder; “just
look at the tips of them, and see if you notice anything.”
Tommy Smith looked as the adder told him, and he was surprised to see
a tiny little hole at the tip of each tooth. “Why, Mr. Adder,” he said,
“it seems to me as if your teeth were hollow and wanted stopping.”
“They _are_ hollow,” said the adder, “and I will tell you why. At the
root of each of them I have a little bag which is full of poison. You
cannot see it, of course, because it is hidden under the flesh of my
upper jaw. But things which cannot be seen are very often felt. Now,
when I bite an animal, these little bags open, and a drop or two of
poison runs down each tooth where it is hollow, so that it goes into
the flesh of that animal and mixes with its blood.”
“And does that kill it?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Oh yes!” answered the adder; “because I only bite small animals. It
would not kill a horse, or a cow, or even a pig, unless it was very
young. But it kills field-mice, and shrew-mice, and things of that
sort.”
“But there is one thing, Mr. Adder, which I don’t understand,” said
Tommy Smith. “I thought that one had to swallow poison for it to kill
one. But you say that this poison of yours goes into the blood.”
“I don’t know anything about poisons that have to be swallowed,” said
the adder; “I only know about _my_ poison, and I use that in the way I
have told you. _My_ poison must go into the blood. If you were only to
swallow it, I daresay it would not hurt you at all.”
“I should not like to try,” Tommy Smith said. “But are you going?” for
the adder had begun to crawl away.
“Yes,” said the adder; “I am going now, for I have plenty to do. I
should not have wasted my time like this, only I heard that poor
creature, the grass-snake, talking about himself, so I thought I would
just show you what a much more important animal I am than he.”
“I think that you are rather conceited, Mr. Adder,” said Tommy Smith.
“The grass-snake is very clever. He can lay eggs, and he says that is
more than you can do.”
“_I_ should be ashamed to do such a thing,” said the adder. “A young
grass-snake _requires_ an egg, but a young adder knows how to do
without one. _We_ can crawl as soon as we come into the world. As for
my being conceited, perhaps I am, just a little. But that is natural. I
can _never_ forget that I have _poison_ flowing in my veins. Now I will
say good-bye, for I have plenty to do, and must not waste my time any
longer.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Adder,” Tommy Smith called after him, for he thought he
had better be friendly with such an animal. “I hope that you will never
bite me.” But the adder merely gave a contemptuous hiss, and was gone.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PEEWIT
“_To eat peewit’s eggs to a peewit seems wrong,
So a hen MAY think hen’s eggs to hens should belong._”
“PEE-WEE-EET! Pee-wee-eet!” That is what a bird kept saying as he flew
in circles round Tommy Smith. Sometimes he flew quite a long way off,
and sometimes he came so near him that it seemed as if he would settle
on his head. “Pee-wee-eet! Pee-wee-eet!” And what a pretty bird this
was! How his white breast glanced in the sun, and how the glossy green
feathers of his back shone in it. He kept turning about in the air as
he flew, so that Tommy Smith could see every part of him.
In fact, this bird was playing the strangest antics. Sometimes he would
clap his wings together above his back, at least Tommy Smith thought
he did; and then he would make such a swishing and whizzing with them,
that really it was quite a loud noise—almost like a steam-engine.
Then, all at once, he would turn sideways and make a dive down towards
the ground, and sometimes (this was the funniest trick of all) he would
tumble right over in the air, as if he had lost his balance and was
really falling. If Tommy Smith had ever seen a tumbler pigeon it would
have reminded him of one, but he never had. And all the while this bird
kept on calling out, “Pee-wee-eet! pee-wee-eet!” as if he wanted Tommy
Smith to speak to him, as, perhaps, he did.
“I know what bird _you_ are,” said Tommy Smith. “I have often seen you
flying over the fields, but you have never come so close to me before.
I think your name is”—
“Pee-wee-eet! pee-wee-eet! That is my name. They call me the peewit.”
“Yes,” said Tommy Smith; “because you say”—
“Pee-wee-eet! pee-wee-eet!” screamed the bird. “Yes, that is why. It
is because I say ‘Pee-wee-eet’”; and as the peewit said this, he made
a sweep down and settled on the ground just in front of Tommy Smith.
So close! Tommy Smith could almost have touched him with his hand. He
_was_ a handsome bird! _Now_ he could see that, besides his beautiful
green back and his white breast, he had a handsome black crest at the
back of his head, that stuck out a long way behind it—as if his hair
had been brushed up behind, Tommy Smith thought, only, of course, it
was not hair, but feathers.
The peewit was not at all afraid, but looked up at Tommy Smith, with
his head on one side, and said, “Yes, that is my name. A name isn’t
sensible if it hasn’t a meaning. Some people call me the lapwing, but
I don’t know what _that_ means. I would rather _you_ called me the
peewit. I like that name best. Well, now you may ask me some questions
if you like.” Tommy Smith would rather have listened to what the peewit
had to tell him about himself first, and then asked him some questions
afterwards, for, just then, he didn’t quite know what questions to ask.
But, of course, he had to say something, or it would have seemed rude,
so he began with, “Please, Mr. Peewit, will you tell me why you say
‘pee-weet’ so often?”
“Why shouldn’t I say it?” said the peewit. “It is my song, and I think
it is a very good one too.”
“But I don’t call it a song at all,” said Tommy Smith.
“_Don’t_ you?” said the peewit.
“No,” said Tommy Smith. “It is not at all like what the lark or the
nightingale sings. That is what _I_ call singing.”
“If all birds were to sing as well as each other,” the peewit said,
“perhaps you would not care to listen to any of them half so much.
_Now_ you say, ‘How sweetly the lark sings,’ or ‘How beautifully the
nightingale sings,’ because they sing better than other birds. But if
every bird was as clever at singing as they are, then to sing well
would be such a common thing, that you would hardly notice it at
all. As it is, you don’t think about the lark nearly so much as the
nightingale, because you hear him much oftener. So perhaps, after all,
it is better that some birds should sing more sweetly than other birds.
Don’t you agree with me?”
“I don’t know,” said Tommy Smith. “I should never have thought of that,
myself.”
“There are a number of things that little boys would never have
thought of,” said the peewit. “Besides,” he went on, “however well a
bird may sing, all he _means_ by his singing is that he is very happy.
That is what the lark means when he sings high up in the blue sky;
and it is what the nightingale means when he sings all night long by
his nest. And that is what I mean, too, when I sing, ‘Pee-wee-eet!
pee-wee-eet!’ So if you look at it in that way, my song is just as good
as theirs, or any other bird’s.”
Tommy Smith did not think the peewit was right in this opinion of his,
but he thought that he had better not contradict him so early in the
conversation. So he only said, “Then, I suppose, you must always be
happy, Mr. Peewit, for you are always saying ‘Pee-wee-eet’?”
“I am always happy as long as people don’t shoot me, or take away my
eggs,” said the peewit. “Why should I not be? It is very pleasant to be
alive.”
“And the grass-snake said _he_ was happy too,” thought Tommy Smith.
“Then, are _all_ animals happy, Mr. Peewit?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” the peewit answered, “they all enjoy their life. That is why
it is so wrong to kill them. For when you kill an animal, you take some
of the happiness that was in the world out of it, and you can never put
it back there again, however much you try.”
“I never will kill animals any more,” said Tommy Smith. “But now, Mr.
Peewit, won’t you tell me something about yourself? Do _you_ do any
clever things as well as the other animals that I have spoken to?”
“Why, haven’t you seen the way I tumble about in the air?” said the
peewit. “And don’t you think that _that_ is very clever? You couldn’t
do it yourself, however much you were to try.”
“No,” said Tommy Smith, “but then _I_ have not got wings, you know.
Perhaps if I _had_ got wings, I would be able to do it as well as you.”
“Do you think so?” said the peewit. “That is only because you are very
conceited. Why, even the swallow can’t do it. _He_ is a splendid flier,
and goes very fast. But, though you were to watch him for a whole day,
you would not see him do such funny things in the air as I do. As for
the other birds—well, look at the cuckoo. What do you think of the way
in which _he_ flies? Why, he just goes along without doing anything at
all. Do you think _he_ could turn head over heels or make the noise
with his wings that I do? If he can, then why doesn’t he? I should just
like to know that.”
“Are you playing a game in the air when you fly like that, Mr. Peewit?”
asked Tommy Smith.
“Yes,” answered the peewit; “that is just what I am doing. Sometimes
I play it by myself, but I like it better when there are some other
peewits to play it with me. We do it to amuse ourselves, and because
we are so happy and have such good spirits. But it is only in the
springtime that we play such games, for we are happier then than at
any other time of the year. In the autumn and winter we fly about in
great flocks over the fields and marshes, or come down upon them and
look for worms and slugs and caterpillars, for those are the things we
eat. We are happy then, too, but not quite so happy as we are in the
springtime, and you won’t see us playing such pranks then, although
there are a great many more of us together. Oh yes! it is a game, but
it is a very useful kind of game, I can tell you.”
“How is it useful?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Why, it prevents people from finding our eggs,” answered the peewit.
“I have told you that we only fly like this in the spring. Well, that
is just the time when we lay our eggs. Now whilst the mother peewit
is sitting quietly on her eggs, the father peewit keeps flying and
tumbling about in the air. When you go for a walk over the fields, you
do not notice the mother peewit on her eggs, for she sits quite still
and never moves. But you can’t help noticing the father peewit, and
you only think of him. If you happen to go too near the place where
the eggs are, the father peewit comes quite close to you, and flies
round and round your head, as I did just now. You think that is very
funny, and so you keep looking at him up in the air, and never think of
looking on the ground where the eggs are.”
“Are the eggs laid on the ground?” said Tommy Smith.
“Of course,” said the peewit. “But let me go on. When the father peewit
sees you are looking at him, he flies a little farther away from the
eggs, and, of course, you follow him. Then he flies a little farther
off still, and in this way he keeps leading you farther and farther
away from the eggs, till he thinks they are safe, and then off he flies
altogether.”
“That is very clever,” said Tommy Smith. “But supposing you didn’t
follow the father peewit, but kept walking towards where the eggs were,
what would the mother peewit do?”
“Why, she would fly away before you got to her,” said the peewit. “And
you would find it very difficult to find the eggs even then.”
“Then, is it only the father peewit that tumbles over in the air?” said
Tommy Smith.
“It is he who does it most,” said the peewit. “He has more time, and
besides it would not be thought right for a mother peewit to throw
herself about in that way whilst she has a family to attend to. When
the mother peewit goes up from her eggs, she flies quietly away till
she is a long way off. Then she settles somewhere on the ground, and
waits for you to go away, and when you have gone away, she comes back
to her eggs again.”
“Then I suppose _you_ are a father peewit?” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh yes,” the peewit answered. “You have seen how _I_ can tumble. And
besides, look how long my crest is. The crest of the mother peewit is
not nearly so long.”
“Where is the mother peewit?” asked Tommy Smith—for he thought he
would like to see her too.
“She is not far off,” the peewit answered, “and she is sitting on her
eggs.”
“Oh! I should so like to see them,” cried Tommy Smith. “May I?”
“If I show you them,” said the peewit, “will you promise not to take
them away.”
“Oh yes, I promise not to,” said Tommy Smith. “I will only look at
them—unless you would be so kind as to give me one,” he added.
“_Give_ you one!” cried the peewit. “I would rather give you the bright
green feathers from my back, or the beautiful crest that is on my
head. Give you one, indeed! No, no; they are not things to be given
away. But come along. You have promised that you will not take them,
and I know you will not break your word.” Then the peewit spread his
wings, and rose into the air again, and began to fly along in front
of Tommy Smith, who had to run to keep up with him. “Pee-wee-eet!
pee-wee-eet!” he cried. “Come along. Come along.”
“Oh, but you go so fast!” said Tommy Smith, panting. “I wish I had
wings like you.”
“I don’t wonder at your wishing _that_,” the peewit said. “_I_ should
think it dreadful if I could only walk and run.” All at once the peewit
flew down on to the ground again. “Here they are,” he said, as Tommy
Smith came up; “and what do you think? Why, one of them has hatched
already; a day earlier than I expected.”
“But where are the eggs?” asked Tommy Smith. “I don’t see them, and I
don’t see any nest either. But what—Oh! there is the mother peewit
sitting on the ground,” he cried out suddenly. And so she was, with
her eggs underneath her. This time she did not fly away, for the father
peewit had told her not to be uneasy.
“Oh, but there is no nest,” said Tommy Smith. “She is sitting on the
bare ground.”
“_Bare_, indeed!” exclaimed the mother peewit. “There is plenty of sand
on the ground, and what more can one want? Just look!” and as she spoke
she moved a little to one side, and there, in a slight hollow, Tommy
Smith saw four—no, three eggs, and something else, something that was
soft and fluffy, so it could not be an egg, although it was the same
size, and the same sort of colour, yellowish, with black spots. Why,
could that be a little baby peewit? Yes, indeed it was, for it moved a
little, and made a little chirping noise.
“Don’t touch him,” cried the father peewit. “He is too young for that.”
“And little boys are so rough,” said the mother peewit.
“But you may look at him,” said the father peewit.
“Oh yes, do,” said the mother peewit; “and tell me what you think of
him. Isn’t he the prettiest little fluffy thing in the whole world?”
“Until the others are hatched,” said the father peewit. “Then there
will be three more, you know.”
“To be sure there will,” said the mother peewit, looking _very_ proud;
“and they will all be as pretty as each other. But I think this one
will be the cleverest,” she added. “There was a certain something in
the way he chipped the shell, and he has lain in a thoughtful attitude
ever since he came out.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said the father peewit. And then they both
looked up at Tommy Smith, as if they expected him to say something.
But Tommy Smith was too busy to say anything just then. He had gone
down on his hands and knees, and was looking at the eggs, for they
interested him more even than the little peewit that had just been
hatched. They were such funny-shaped eggs, large at one end and pointed
at the other, something like a small pear, Tommy Smith thought, and
they lay in the little hollow with their pointed ends all meeting
together in the middle of it. They were of a greenish yellow colour,
with great black splotches upon them. Of course they were much smaller
than the eggs that a hen lays, but still, Tommy Smith thought, they
were large eggs for a peewit to lay. A peewit is hardly so large as a
pigeon, but these eggs were a good deal larger than a pigeon’s egg.
“Yes, they are very nice eggs,” he said at last, as he got up from his
hands and knees. “Are they good to eat?”
“Yes,” said the father peewit, “they are”; and as he said this he
looked _very_, _very_ sad.
“Yes, they _are_ good to eat,” said the mother peewit, as she nestled
down on her eggs again. “Oh, how I wish they were not!”
“Why?” said Tommy Smith. (He was only a little boy, or he would not
have asked such questions.)
“I will tell you why,” said the mother peewit. “There are bad men who
come and take our eggs _because_ they are so good to eat, and then they
sell them to greedy wretches, who are still worse than themselves.
Oh, how wicked men are! Just fancy! They eat our poor little children
whilst they are still in their cradles.”
“Yes,” said the father peewit, “for the mere pleasure of eating, they
will ruin thousands of families.”
“Is it so _very_ wicked to eat eggs?” asked Tommy Smith. “I have eaten
a great many myself.”
“What! peewit’s eggs?” cried both the birds together.
“Oh no,” said Tommy Smith feeling _very_ uncomfortable. “But I have
often eaten fowl’s eggs.”
“That is different,” said the mother peewit. “We will say nothing about
that.”
“No, no,” said the father peewit. “We do not wish to be censorious.”
“What does that mean?” asked Tommy Smith, for it was a long word, and
he did not remember having heard it before.
“I mean,” said the father peewit, “that if people _only_ ate fowl’s
eggs, peewit’s eggs would be let alone, and that would be a very good
thing. Fowls, you know, are accustomed to it, but we peewits have
finer feelings.”
“Yes,” said the mother peewit; “we are more sensitive than common
poultry.”
Tommy Smith couldn’t help remembering what the rat had said to him
about asking the hen, and he thought he _would_ ask her some day. But
now he was talking to peewits. “You told me it was very difficult to
find your eggs,” he said.
“So it is,” said the father peewit; “but it is not impossible.”
“I wish it were,” said the mother peewit. “But there are wicked men who
learn how to do it, and then they can find them quite easily. Oh, what
a wicked world it is!”
Tommy Smith didn’t know what to say to comfort the poor peewits, until
all at once an idea occurred to him. “Why do you lay eggs at all?” he
said. “You know, if you didn’t lay them, nobody could take them away
from you.”
“Not lay eggs?” cried the mother peewit. “Why, it is our duty to lay
them. We have our duties to perform, of course.”
“If we did _not_ lay eggs,” said the father peewit (he looked _very_
grave as he spoke), “there would soon be no more peewits in the world,
and what do you suppose would happen then?”
Tommy Smith didn’t know, so he said, “What _would_ happen, Mr. Peewit?”
“It is too dreadful to think about,” the peewit said. “The very idea of
it makes one shudder. A world without peewits! Oh dear! a nice sort of
world _that_ would be!”
The mother peewit shook her head. “It could hardly go on, dear; could
it?” she said.
“It _might_,” answered the father peewit, “but there would be very
little _meaning_ in it.”
Tommy Smith certainly thought the world might go on without peewits,
but he didn’t _quite_ understand the last part of the sentence. “But
it seems to me,” he said to himself, “that _animals_ think themselves
very important.” “And are _you_ a useful animal?” he said aloud to the
father peewit,—for the mother peewit was busy again with her eggs and
the young one.
“Useful!” exclaimed the peewit. “Why, we are sometimes put into
gardens to eat the slugs and the insects there. I suppose _that_ is
being useful.”
“Oh yes,” said Tommy Smith; “if you don’t eat the cherries, or the
strawberries, or the asparagus, or”—
“We are not vegetarians,” said the peewit, “we prefer an animal diet,
and we only eat things that do harm.”
“But don’t you eat worms?” said Tommy Smith.
“Of course we do,” said the peewit.
“But I don’t think worms do harm.”
“If they don’t, it is because we eat them,” the peewit retorted. “If we
didn’t eat them, there would be too many of them, and then, of course,
they would do harm.”
“Well, when I grow up,” said Tommy Smith, “I will have peewits in my
garden as well as frogs, and—Oh! but do you agree with frogs?” he
asked, for this was an important point.
“Young frogs agree very well with _us_,” said the peewit. “So it comes
to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said Tommy Smith. “Not if the old ones don’t.”
“As for the old ones,” said the peewit, “we leave them alone. They are
too big to be interfered with. So, you see, that’s all right too.”
Tommy Smith didn’t feel quite so sure about this. He couldn’t help
thinking that perhaps the peewits ate the little frogs. But, just as
he was going to ask them this, he remembered that if he didn’t make
haste home, he would be late for dinner. Of course, as soon as he began
to think about his own dinner, he forgot all about the peewit’s, and
said good-bye at once. So off he ran. The mother peewit just nodded to
him as she sat on her eggs, but the father peewit rose up into the air
again, and flew round him, and swished his wings, and tumbled about,
and cried, “Pee-wee-eet! pee-wee-eet!” and Tommy Smith felt quite sure
that he meant “Good-bye, good-bye.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MOLE
“_If we’re only contented, some cause we shall find
To be thankful: the mole thought it nice to be blind._”
THE next walk that Tommy Smith took was over some fields where there
were a great many mole-hills. Of course, Tommy Smith had often seen
mole-hills before, but I am not sure if he had ever seen a mole; for a
mole, as you know, lives underneath the ground, and does not often come
up to the top of it. So, when he saw a little black thing scrambling
about in the grass, he cried out, “Oh! whatever is that?” and ran to it
and picked it up.
“You won’t _hurt_ me, I know,” said the mole (for it was one)—“and I
don’t mind your _looking_ at me.” You see Tommy Smith was getting a
much better boy to animals, now that they had told him something about
themselves, and the animals were beginning to find this out, and were
not so frightened of him as they used to be.
Tommy Smith looked at the mole, and stroked it as it lay in his hand,
and then he said, “Why, what a funny little black thing you are.”
“Little!” said the mole; “I don’t know what you mean by that. I am much
bigger than the mouse or the shrew-mouse. You don’t expect me to be as
big as the rat, do you?”
“I don’t know,” said Tommy Smith, “but, you know, the rat is not so
very big.”
“He is as big as he requires to be, I suppose,” said the mole, “and so
am I. I have never felt too small in all my life, and I wonder that you
should think me so. Why, look at those great hills of earth which I
have flung up all over the fields. I am big enough to have made those,
anyhow, and strong enough too. And look, how large and high they are.”
“But are they so very high?” said Tommy Smith. “Why, I step over them
quite easily.”
“Dear me, that seems very wonderful,” said the mole. “But I advise you
not to do it often, for it must be a great exertion, and you might hurt
yourself. But you must not think that because _you_ are very big, _I_
am very small. That would be very conceited.”
Tommy Smith saw that he had not said the right thing, so he tried to
think of something to say that the mole would like better. “Oh,” he
said at last, “what a very pretty, soft coat you have! I like it very
much, indeed.”
“Yes; feel it,” said the mole. “It is a very handsome fur; and I can
tell you something about it which is curious.”
“What is that?” said Tommy Smith.
“Why, you may stroke it whichever way you like,” answered the mole,
“without hurting me. It is not every animal that has a coat like
_that_. There is the cat, poor thing! If you stroke her fur one way,
she is very pleased and begins to purr; but if you stroke it the other
way, it hurts her, and she does not like it at all. That is because her
hair is long and lies all one way. Now my hair is short, and it does
not lie any way.”
“I suppose you mean that it does not point either towards your head or
your tail,” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes, that is what I mean,” said the mole. “Instead of that, it sticks
straight up, and when you stroke it, it moves whichever way your hand
moves, without making me feel at all uncomfortable.”
“That is a very nice fur to have,” said Tommy Smith. “Then, I suppose
that sometimes if you were burrowing, and you wanted to go backwards
for a little way, it would not hurt you to do so.”
“Not at all,” said the mole. “Now the poor cat could not do that. She
could not go backwards in a burrow, because it would rub all her hair
up the wrong way.”
“But cats don’t burrow,” said Tommy Smith.
“Of course not,” said the mole. “They know that they would not be able
to, so they don’t try. They are poor things.”
Tommy Smith could not see why cats should be poor things because they
didn’t burrow, but the mole seemed quite sure of it, and he did not
like to contradict him. “I suppose, Mr. Mole,” he said, “that you are
made for burrowing.”
“Yes, I am,” said the mole, “and I can do it better than any other
animal in the world. You see, I have a pair of spades to help me, and I
dig with both of them at the same time.”
“A pair of spades!” cried Tommy Smith in surprise. “Why, where are
they? I don’t see them.”
“Where are they?” said the mole; “why, here they are, to be sure,” and
he stretched out his two little front feet, and moved them about.
“Ah, now I see what you mean,” said Tommy Smith, and he bent down his
head and began to look at them more closely.
The mole might well have called his feet spades, for they were shaped
something like them, and he used them to dig with,—which is what
spades are used for. They were short and broad, with five little toes,
and each toe had a very strong claw at the end of it. These funny
little feet stuck out on each side of the mole’s body, and they were
so very close to the body that they looked as if they had been sewn on
to it. There did not seem to be any leg belonging to them at all. Of
course there _were_ legs, and very strong ones too, but they were so
short, and so hidden under the skin, that Tommy Smith could not see
them, although he felt them directly. The hind legs and feet were much
smaller, and not nearly so strong, which, the mole said, was because
they had not so much work to do. Between them there was a very short
tail, just long enough, Tommy Smith thought, to take hold of and lift
the mole up by. But he did not do this, in case he should be offended.
“Well,” said the mole, after Tommy Smith had looked at him for a little
while, “what do you think of me? I hope you think me handsome.”
“Yes, I think you are,” Tommy Smith answered, though he did not feel
quite sure of this. “At anyrate, your fur is handsome, for it is like
velvet.”
“Yes,” said the mole; “and, do you know, I am sometimes called the
little gentleman in the black velvet coat.”
“It is not quite black,” said Tommy Smith. “There is a greyish colour
in it too. I think it would look very pretty if it was made into
something. Oh, Mr. Mole,” he cried all of a sudden, “now I remember
that I have heard people talk about moleskin waistcoats!”
At this the mole gave a little squeak, and jumped quite out of Tommy
Smith’s hand, and then he began to burrow into the ground as fast as
he could, and this was very fast indeed, so that before Tommy Smith
had got over his surprise, he was almost out of sight. “Oh, Mr. Mole,”
he cried, “do come back!” but the mole was very angry, and would not
consent to for some time.
“If I do,” he said at last, “you must promise me never to talk in that
way again.”
“Oh, I never will,” said Tommy Smith. “I quite forgot who I was talking
to.”
“Moleskin waistcoats, indeed!” said the mole. “I think the people who
wear them are very wicked people. They never think how many poor little
moles must be killed only to make one. I hope _you_ have never worn a
waistcoat like that?”
“Oh no,” answered Tommy Smith, “I never have. Nobody has ever given me
one.”
“I hope you never will,” said the mole; “for if you do, you will be
almost as wicked a man as a mole-catcher, and he is the wickedest
person I know of.”
“A mole-catcher!” cried Tommy Smith; “then are there men who catch
moles?”
“Oh yes, indeed there are,” said the mole. “There are men who do that
and nothing else.”
“How do they do it?” asked Tommy Smith.
“They have traps,” answered the mole, “which they put in the passages
and corridors of our great underground palaces.”
“Your houses, I suppose, you mean,” said Tommy Smith.
“I mean what I say,” said the mole. “You may live in a house, I
daresay, but I think the place that I live in is quite large and fine
enough to be called a palace, so I call it one.”
“Oh! but it cannot be so big as the house that I live in,” said Tommy
Smith.
“Well,” said the mole, “I should just like to know how long the longest
corridor in your house is.”
Tommy Smith thought to himself a little. The house he lived in was not
a very large one, for his father was not a _very_ rich man. There were
not many passages in it, and he did not think the longest of them was
long enough to be called a corridor. Still, he thought that they must
be longer than the passages of a mole’s house, and he couldn’t help
feeling rather proud as he said, “Oh! I don’t know exactly, because I
have never measured it, but perhaps it is six yards long.”
“Six yards?” cried the mole. “Do you call _that_ a corridor? Why, some
of mine are more than twenty times as long as that. You might walk over
a whole field without coming to the end of them. And how many corridors
has your house got, then?”
“Oh, I think there are three,” said Tommy Smith; but this time he
didn’t feel nearly so proud.
“Good gracious!” cried the mole. “Why, yours must be a very poor place
to live in. I wish I could show you over my palace, but you are such an
awkward size that you would never be able to get into it. My corridors
are longer than yours, but they are not nearly so high. However,
perhaps it is just as well that you can’t get into it, for if you were
once there, I am sure you would never want to go back again.”
“Perhaps, Mr. Mole,” said Tommy Smith, “as you can’t show me over it,
you will tell me what it is like.”
“Well,” said the mole, “I will; and perhaps, if you are always a good
boy, and _never_ think of wearing a moleskin waistcoat, I will show it
you some day from the outside; but that can only be when I have done
with it, and am going to build a new one, for I should have to break
open the roof for you to see into it. Well, then, the principal part of
my palace is called the keep, or fortress,—_I_ call it the fortress.
It is very large, and the roof goes up into a beautiful, high dome. You
know what a dome is, I suppose?”
“Oh yes,” said Tommy Smith; for once he had been to London, and he
remembered the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“I wish you could see how high and stately it is,” said the mole. “It
goes right up into the bush ever so high.”
“You mean ‘into the air,’ I think,” said Tommy Smith.
“I mean what I say,” said the mole; “into the bush. That is why you
can’t see it.”
“Oh, but I can see it,” said Tommy Smith. “I can always find your
fortresses, Mr. Mole. I see lots of them every time I go out walking.
They are not hidden at all. Why, there they are all over the field,
and you know you told me to look at them yourself.”
The mole gave a little choky laugh. “Oh dear!” he cried, “and do you
_really_ think that _those_ are my fortresses? You are _very_ much
mistaken if you do. Why, they are only the hills that I throw up when I
am making my tunnels and corridors. All you will find if you open them
is a hole going down into one of those. Oh no; my fortress is not built
there. It is carefully hidden under a bush or the root of a tree, so
that you can’t see it, however high it is. Only the wicked mole-catcher
is able to find it, and I am very sorry he can.”
This was a great surprise to Tommy Smith, for he had always thought
that the mole lived under those little brown heaps of earth. But he
had only thought so because he had never taken any trouble to find out
about it. “I see you are cleverer than I thought, Mr. Mole,” he said;
“but I should like you to tell me something more about your palace and
fortress.”
“I told you that it was very large,” said the mole, “and that it went
up into a high dome outside. Inside, it is not nearly so high, but it
is very nice and comfortable; and the floor and the sides and ceiling
are always quite smooth and polished, for I polish them myself, and
never leave it to the servants.”
“But how do you polish them?” said Tommy Smith.
“Why, with my fur to be sure,” said the mole. “I prefer that to a piece
of wash-leather.” (He laughed again as he said this, but Tommy Smith
didn’t know what for.) “My fur, as you see, is smooth too. If you
were to walk down one of my corridors, you would be surprised to find
how hard and smooth the sides of it are. That is because I am always
running up and down them, and rubbing them with my fur.”
“But doesn’t that make you very dirty?” said Tommy Smith. “Surely the
earth must get into your fur and stay there.”
“It _never_ stays there,” said the mole with great pride. “I have a
very strong muscle which runs all along my back just under the skin,
and when I twitch that, every little piece of mould or earth that is in
my fur flies out of it again. There! now I have twitched it. Look at
me and see how clean I am, although I have only just come out of the
ground. Oh no; there is never anything in _my_ coat! It is a saying in
our family that a mole _may_ live in the dirt, but he is never _dirty_.”
“That seems very funny,” said Tommy Smith. “But tell me some more about
the fortress that you live in.”
“That is just what I was going to do,” said the mole, “but you ask so
many questions, that I am not able to get on. Now I will begin again,
and perhaps it would be better if you were to say nothing till I have
done.”
So Tommy Smith sat down on the ground to listen, and the mole went on
in these words:
“Inside my fortress there is a large room which is quite round. I call
it my bedroom or dormitory, because sometimes I go to sleep there.
There are two different ways of getting into it. One of them is by the
floor, and that is easy. But the second way is by the ceiling, and that
is much more difficult.”
“By the floor and the ceiling?” cried Tommy Smith, quite forgetting
what the mole had said. “How very funny! I get into _my_ room through
a door in one of the sides.”
“Dear me!” said the mole. “Well, I should not like to enter a room in
that way.”
“Why not?” asked Tommy Smith.
“The idea of such a thing!” said the mole. “As for doors, they are
things I don’t understand. Galleries and tunnels are what I use, and I
think them much grander.”
“But”—Tommy Smith was beginning.
“Let me get on,” said the mole. “I have two galleries inside my
fortress, an upper one and a lower one. The lower one is the largest.
It runs all round the ceiling of my bedroom. From it there are five
little passages which run up into the upper one. That goes round in a
circle too, but it is high up inside the dome of my fortress, and a
long way above the ceiling of my bedroom. So what do you think I have
done? I have made three little tunnels, which go from my upper gallery
right into the top of my bedroom. I just run down one of them, and
tumble into it through the ceiling.”
“But can’t you get into your bedroom from the lower gallery too?” asked
Tommy Smith.
“Oh no,” said the mole; “that would never do. It would be so easy;
and a mole likes to do things that are difficult. I go into my lower
gallery first, and then I go from that into my upper gallery. I can go
by five different passages, and choose which I like.”
“Five different passages! That is a lot,” cried Tommy Smith.
“Yes; and there are three more from the upper gallery into the
bedroom!” said the mole. “How many doors are there into _your_ rooms?”
“Oh, one,” said Tommy Smith.
“Only one!” said the mole. “That is very sad. Why, if I had only one
tunnel into my room I should be almost ashamed to go through it. But
then you have only a house to live in, and not a palace, as I have.”
Tommy Smith thought that this was rather a grand way of talking, and he
was just beginning, “Perhaps, if you were to see my house”—when the
mole went on with, “Of course, such a fine palace as mine ought to
have a good many fine roads leading up to it.”
“Ought it?” said Tommy Smith; “and how many has it?”
“Seven,” said the mole.
“Seven!” exclaimed Tommy Smith.
“Yes,” said the mole, “and I make them all myself. Why, how many has
yours?”
“It has only one,” said Tommy Smith, “but I think that is quite enough.”
“For a house, perhaps, it may be,” said the mole; “but _I_ should be
sorry to have to put up with it. _My palace_ has seven, and I know
some very rich moles who have eight. These are the great corridors
which some people call the high roads. Some of them run through fine
avenues of tree-roots, and, you know, a fine avenue of tree-roots has a
splendid appearance. They wind all about, and go for ever such a way,
and there are smaller corridors which run out of them on each side, and
spread all over the fields.”
“You mean _under_ the fields, Mr. Mole,” said Tommy Smith; “for, you
know, the grass grows over your corridors, and nobody can see them.”
“I am very glad they can’t,” said the mole, “or my bedroom, or my
nursery either.”
“What, have you a nursery too?” said Tommy Smith. “Why, that is just as
if you were a person.”
“Of course I have a nursery,” said the mole. “What should I do with my
children if I had not? I could not have them always in the fortress, or
playing about in the corridors. They would be quite out of place there,
and very much in the way. So I have a nursery for them, and they lie
there upon a nice warm bed, which I make myself, of young grass and
other soft things.”
“Oh, then I suppose that you are the mother mole,” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes, I am,” said the mole; “and you should call me Mrs. Mole, and not
Mr. as you have been doing; and as for my being like a person, why, I
am one, of course, and an important person too, _I_ think. Why, do you
know that I drain the land?”
“Do you really, Mrs. Mole?” said Tommy Smith; “but is not that very
difficult?”
“You would find it so, I daresay,” answered the mole, “but to me it is
quite easy.”
“How do you do it?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Why, by digging to be sure,” the mole said. “I just make my tunnels,
and my trenches, and my corridors, and then when the rain comes it runs
off into them, and doesn’t lie on the ground so long as it would if
they were not there.”
“Oh, but if the water runs into your tunnels,” said Tommy Smith, “how
is it that you are not drowned?”
“Oh, it does not stay there long enough for that,” said the mole; “and,
besides, I am a very good swimmer. Just take me up again and put me
into that little pond there, and I will show you,”—for there was a
pond not far off where some ducks and geese were swimming about. “Drive
those rude things away first,” said the mother mole, as Tommy Smith
stood with her in his hand, at the edge of the pond, just ready to drop
her in. “If they see me, they will be sure to make some rude remark,
and, indeed, there is no saying what liberties they might take.”
So Tommy Smith drove away the ducks and geese, and then dropped the
mother mole into the water, and,—would you believe it?—she swam
almost as well as if she had been a duck or a goose herself, moving all
her four little feet at a great rate, and going along very quickly. She
_did_ look so funny. She went across the pond, and then turned round
and came back again, and, as she scuttled out on to the bank, she said,
“So now you see that a mole can swim. Can _you_?”
“No,” answered Tommy Smith; for he had not learnt to, yet.
“Dear me,” said the mother mole, “you cannot swim, or dig, or drain the
ground, and I am so much smaller and can do all three, besides a great
many other things. But then _I_ am a mole.”
“I didn’t say that I couldn’t dig,” Tommy Smith said. “I can, a little,
only _I_ do it with a spade. I mean a real spade,” he added. “Of
course, I can’t do it with my hands.”
“What stupid hands!” said the mole. “Why, what _can_ they be good for?
But are you sure you could dig properly, even if you had a spade? Do
you think you could do anything useful now? For instance, could you dig
a well?”
“I shouldn’t like to do it all by myself,” said Tommy Smith; “it would
take me a very long time. But I don’t suppose _you_ dig wells either.”
“Oh, don’t you!” said the mole; “then how do you think we get our water
to drink when the weather is dry? Of course, if we have a pond or a
ditch near us we can easily make a tunnel to the edge of it, but it is
not every mole who is so fortunate as to live by the waterside. Those
who do not, have to dig deep pits for the water to run into; for I must
tell you that there is always water to be found in the earth, if only
you dig deep enough for it. If you make a hole which goes right down
into the ground, very soon the water will begin to trickle into it
through the sides and the bottom, and then, of course, it is a well.
I wish you could see some of our wells. They are so nicely made, and
sometimes they are brim full.”
“So you have real wells with water in them!” cried Tommy Smith; for it
seemed to him so very funny that moles should have wells as well as men.
“To be sure, we have,” said the mole; “and I think it is very clever of
us to have thought of it.”
“Yes, it is indeed,” said Tommy Smith; “and I begin to think that all
the animals are clever.”
“I don’t know about _that_,” said the mole; “but _we_ are.”
“Oh yes; and so is the rat, and the frog, and the peewit, and”—
“I am glad to hear it,” said the mole. “_I_ should not have thought so.”
“Oh! but they are really,” Tommy Smith went on eagerly. “Do let me tell
you how the peewit”—
“I have nothing to learn from _him_, I hope,” said the mole; “a poor
foolish bird who wastes all his time in the air.”
“Oh, but if you only knew how the mother peewit”—Tommy Smith was
beginning again.
“I should be sorry to take _her_ as an example,” said the mole sharply;
“she is a flighty thing, without solid qualities. Other animals may be
all very well in their way,” she went on, after a pause, “but they are
not _moles_, and they none of them know how to dig.”
“Oh, but the rabbit”—
“The rabbit, indeed!” cried the mole very indignantly. “Why, what can
_he_ do? He can just make a clumsy hole, and that is all. He is a mere
labourer; and I hope you do not compare him with a real artist like
myself.”
“Oh no,” said Tommy Smith; but he thought the mole was very conceited.
“Not that it is his fault,” the mole continued. “Of course, he cannot
be expected to make such wonderful places as I do. After all, what has
he got to dig with? His feet are only paws, they are not spades, as
mine are; and then he has two great big eyes for the dirt to get into,
which must be a great inconvenience to him.”
“But haven’t you eyes, too, Mrs. Mole?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Would you like to try and find them?” answered the mole. “You may, if
you like.”
So Tommy Smith knelt down on the ground and began to look all about
where he thought the mole’s eyes were likely to be, and to feel with
his fingers in the fur. But look and feel as he might, it was no use,
he couldn’t find the eyes anywhere. But, just as he was going to give
up trying, all at once he thought he saw two little black things
hardly so big as the head of a small black pin. Could those be eyes?
Tommy Smith hardly believed that they could be, for some time; they
were so _very_ small. “Are those your eyes, Mrs. Mole?” he asked at
last.
“Yes, indeed they are,” the mother mole answered; “and are they not a
beautiful pair? How difficult they are to find, and how well my fur
hides them! It would not be easy for the mould to get into _them_;
_they_ are not like those great staring things of the rabbit.”
“They are very small,” said Tommy Smith.
“I should think so!” said the mole; “and what an advantage it is to
have small eyes.”
“But can you see with them?” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh no,” said the mole; “and what an advantage it is not to be able to
see.”
Tommy Smith did not understand this at all. “The rabbit can see,” he
said, “and so can all the other animals.”
“_They_ are obliged to,” answered the mole, “and so they have to put
up with it; but a mole lives in the dark, and therefore it does not
require to see.”
“But what are eyes for, if they are not to see with?” Tommy Smith
asked. He felt sure it was a sensible question, and it seemed to him
that the mole was talking nonsense.
“They are for not getting in the way when you make tunnels in the
ground,” said the mole. “Mine never get in the way, so I know that they
are the best eyes that anyone can have.”
This was quite a new idea to Tommy Smith, and he tried to think what it
would be like to live in the ground, and to have eyes that you couldn’t
see with, and that didn’t get in the way. At last he said, “It seems to
me, Mrs. Mole, that it would be much better if you had not any eyes at
all.”
“That is a strange idea, to be sure!” said the mole. “Not have eyes,
indeed! That would be a fine thing.”
“But if you can’t see with them,” said Tommy Smith.
“What of that?” said the mole; “we have them, and so we are proud of
them. It is a saying in our family that a mole _may_ be blind, but he
has _eyes_ for all that.”
“Poor little mole,” said Tommy Smith, for though the animal seemed to
be quite happy itself, he couldn’t help feeling very sorry for it. “But
are you _quite_ blind?”
“If I am not quite, I am very nearly,” the mole answered, “and I am
thankful for _that_. I just know when it is light and when it isn’t,
which is all a mole requires to know.”
“But can’t you see me?” Tommy Smith asked.
“You, indeed!” answered the mole. “And why should I want to see you?”
“I’m afraid you _are_ blind,” Tommy Smith said quite sadly.
“At anyrate,” said the mole, “I have less seeing to do than almost any
other animal, and, when I think of that, I can’t _help_ feeling proud,
though I know I oughtn’t to be. But I think you have talked enough
about my eyes,” the mole continued. “Perhaps you would like to know
something about my teeth now. Look! there they are,” and she opened her
mouth as wide as she could, which was not very wide, for her mouth was
so small. What funny little white teeth they were, and how sharp,—as
sharp and as pointed as needles.
“Why are they so pointed?” asked Tommy Smith. “The rabbit’s teeth are
not at all like that, and the rat’s are not either.”
“It is because we eat different things,” said the mole. “Different
kinds of animals have different food, and so they have different kinds
of teeth to eat it with. Mine are nice and sharp, because they have to
bite and kill whatever they catch hold of.”
“But what is it that they have to bite and kill?” said Tommy Smith.
“Ah, you would never guess,” answered the mole. “You must know that we
moles are very brave animals, and we fight a great deal; sometimes with
each other, but mostly with great serpents which live in the ground,
although it really belongs to us.”
“Serpents?” said Tommy Smith. “Why, do you mean snakes?”
“Of course I do,” said the mole.
[Illustration: “WE MOLES ARE VERY HEROIC”]
“Snakes that live in the ground!” Tommy Smith cried. “Why, I don’t know
of any that do. The grass-snake doesn’t, or the adder either. What are
these snakes like, Mrs. Mole?”
“They are smooth and slimy,” said the mole. “They have no head, or, if
they have, it looks like another tail, and they are always crawling
through the ground, which is ours, of course, and trying to break into
our palaces.”
“Oh, but I call those worms!” said Tommy Smith.
“You may call them so if you like,” said the mole, “but _I_ call them
snakes. You should see the way I fight with them! How they writhe and
twist about when I seize them between my sharp teeth. They try hard to
get away, and they would kill me if only they could. But I am too brave
and too strong for them, so I kill _them_ instead, and eat them as
well. We moles are very heroic.”
“Do you eat anything else?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Caterpillars sometimes, and a beetle or two,” answered the mole. “But
I like snakes best of all.”
“Worms,” said Tommy Smith.
“Snakes,” said the mole. But Tommy Smith was right, the mole’s snakes
were harmless worms; but it is nice to think oneself a hero.
“Good-bye,” said the mole rather suddenly. “I am tired of talking, and
I want to have a little sleep.”
“Oh, but it is the middle of the day,” said Tommy Smith.
“What of that?” said the mole. “I feel tired, so I shall go to sleep.”
“Then do you always sleep in the daytime?” asked Tommy Smith.
“I know nothing about daytime or nighttime,” the mole answered, “and
perhaps if you lived under the ground, as I do, you would not either. I
feel tired _now_, so I shall go to sleep now. Good-bye”; and the mother
mole began to sink into the earth, and all at once she was gone,—just
as Tommy Smith was going to ask her what was the use of having such a
grand palace to live in if she was blind and couldn’t see it.
One sometimes thinks of a good question just too late to ask it.
CHAPTER IX.
THE WOODPIGEON
“_The woodpigeon greets Tommy Smith with a coo,
Which he modifies slightly to ‘How do you do?’_”
WHAT could be more beautiful than the woods that fine spring morning
on which Tommy Smith walked through them? The sky was blue, and the
air was soft, and the birds were singing everywhere. There was a
concert, surely; the trees had given it. That is what came into Tommy
Smith’s head, and perhaps he was right. It is in spring that the season
begins. Then ladies and gentlemen dress themselves finely, and come
and stand together in a crowd, and there is talking, and laughing,
and singing. And here in the woods the trees had all put on fine new
dresses of bright green, for _their_ season of spring had come, and
green was the fashionable colour. _They_ stood together too,—ever so
many of them,—and bent their heads towards each other, and seemed to
be whispering. Then their leaves rustled, which was a much pleasanter
sound than ladies’ and gentlemen’s talking and laughing (though perhaps
it did not mean _quite_ as much); and, oh! what beautiful sounds came
from their midst. Tommy Smith knew that it was not the trees who were
singing, but the birds in them. “But it seems as if it were the trees,”
he thought, “because I can’t see the birds. But perhaps the trees ask
the birds to sing for them, as we ask people to play and sing for us.
That is how they give their concerts and parties, perhaps. The large
ones are like rich people who can afford to hire a whole band, but the
little ones and the bushes are the people who are not so well off, and
_they_ can only have a bird or two.” Tommy Smith thought all this,
because he was a little boy, and liked to pretend things, but a long
time afterwards, when he was much wiser, he used to remember those
walks of his in the woods, and sometimes he would say to himself, “Yes,
those were the best seasons; those were the concerts and parties most
worth going to.”
A fallen tree lay across Tommy Smith’s path. It had once been a tall,
stately oak, now it made a nice mossy seat for a little boy. We are not
all of us so useful when we grow old. “I will sit down on it,” thought
Tommy Smith, “and listen to the birds singing, and pretend they are
people, and not birds at all.” So Tommy Smith sat down and listened. A
thrush was sitting on the very tip-top of a high fir tree, and soon he
began to fill the whole air with his beautiful, clear, joyous notes.
“I like that as well as the piano,” said Tommy Smith, “and I don’t
think I know any lady who could sing such a beautiful song.” Then the
robin began. “That is lower and sweeter,” he thought. “_People_ make
a great deal more noise when they sing, but it doesn’t seem to mean
so much, or, if it does, I don’t like the meaning so well. Then a jay
screamed, and some starlings began to chatter. “Oh, there!” cried Tommy
Smith, clapping his hands. “That is much more like people. Ladies
talk and sing just like that. But not like _that_,” he continued; for
now another sound began to mingle with the rest, such a pretty, such
a _very_ pretty sound, _so_ soft, and so tender and sleepy, “like a
lullaby,” Tommy Smith thought. And, as he listened to it, all the woods
seemed to grow hushed and still, as if they were listening too. “Oh,”
said Tommy Smith, “it is no use pretending any more. That couldn’t be
people. No men, and no women either, have such a pretty voice as that.”
“Coo-oo-oo-oo, coo-oo-oo-oo,” said the voice. It had been some way off
before, but now it sounded much nearer. “Coo-oo-oo-oo, coo-oo-oo-oo.”
Why, surely it was in that tree, only just a little way from where
Tommy Smith was sitting. “I will go and look,” he thought. “I know who
it is. It is the woodpigeon. Perhaps he will stay and talk to me.”
So he got up, and walked towards the tree. But—was it not strange?—as
he came to it the voice seemed to change just a little. Only just a
little; it had still the same pretty, soft sound, and the end part was
just the same, but, instead of “Coo-oo-oo-oo, coo-oo-oo-oo,” which it
had been saying before, now it was saying—yes, and quite distinctly
too—“How do you do-oo-oo-oo? How do you do-oo-oo-oo?” Yes, there
could be no doubt of it, and as Tommy Smith came quite up to the tree,
there was the woodpigeon sitting on one of the lowest branches, bowing
to him quite politely, and asking him how he was.
“Oh, I am quite well, Mr. Woodpigeon,” answered Tommy Smith. “I hope
you are.”
“Oh, I am quite well too-oo-oo-oo,” cooed the woodpigeon, bobbing his
head up and down all the while.
“Why do you move your head up and down like that whilst you speak?”
asked Tommy Smith.
“Why, because it is the proper thing to do-oo-oo-oo,” replied the
woodpigeon.
“But _I_ don’t do it when _I_ speak,” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh no; but then _I_ am not you-oo-oo-oo,” said the woodpigeon.
Tommy Smith didn’t know how to answer this, so he thought he would
change the subject. “What have you been doing this morning, Mr.
Woodpigeon?” he said.
“Why, sitting here in the woo-oo-oo-oods and coo-oo-oo-ing,” the
woodpigeon answered.
“Oh, but not all the morning, have you?” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh no,” said the woodpigeon. “From about six to nine I was having my
breakfast in the fields.”
Tommy Smith thought that three hours was a very long time to take over
one’s breakfast, and he said so. “I don’t take half an hour over mine,”
he added.
“That is all very well,” said the woodpigeon; “but your breakfast is
brought to you, whilst I have to find mine for myself. What you eat is
put down before you on a table, but _my_ table is the whole country,
and it is so large and broad that it takes me a long while to find what
is on it, and to eat as much of it as I want.”
“I wonder what your breakfast is like, Mr. Woodpigeon,” said Tommy
Smith. “I suppose it is very different to mine.”
“Let me see,” cooed the woodpigeon. “This morning I had a few peas and
beans, besides some oats and barley. I got those in the fields, and I
found some green clover there too, as well as some wild mustard, and
some ragweed and charlock, and a few other seeds and roo-oo-oo-oots.”
“Oh dear, Mr. Woodpigeon,” said Tommy Smith; “why, what a lot you do
eat.”
“I don’t call that much,” said the woodpigeon. “When I was tired of
looking about in the fields, I went to the woods again, and got a few
acorns, and some beechnuts, and”—
“Oh! but look here, Mr. Woodpigeon,” said Tommy Smith. “You couldn’t
have eaten all those this morning, because they are not all ripe now,
and”—
“I didn’t say they were ripe,” said the woodpigeon; “and if I didn’t
eat them this morning, then I did on some other morning, so it’s
all the same. Those are the things I eat, at anyrate, and I can’t
be expected to remember exactly when I eat them. I had a few stones
though, of course. They are always to be had, whatever time of year it
is. _Stones_ are _always_ in season.”
“Stones!” cried Tommy Smith in great surprise. “Oh, come now; I know
you don’t eat them.”
“Oh, don’t I?” said the woodpigeon. “I should be very sorry if I
couldn’t get any,—I know that. It would be a nice thing, indeed, if
one couldn’t have a few stones to eat with one’s meals. That would be a
good joke.”
Tommy Smith thought that _he_ wouldn’t think it a joke to _have_ to eat
stones, and he could hardly believe that the woodpigeon was speaking
the truth. But he was such an innocent-looking bird, and seemed so
_very_ respectable, that he thought he must be. “Are they very large
stones?” he asked at last.
“Oh no,” answered the woodpigeon. “They are not large, but very
small—just the right size to go into my mill.”
“Into your mill?” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes,” said the woodpigeon; “the little mill which is inside me.”
Tommy Smith was getting more and more puzzled. What could the
woodpigeon mean? “And yet he is such a nice bird,” he said to himself.
“I don’t think he would tell stories.”
“I see that you don’t understand me,” said the woodpigeon; “so, if you
like, I will explain it all to you.”
“Oh, I should so like to know!” said Tommy Smith.
So the woodpigeon gave a gentle coo, and began to tell him all about
it. “Yes,” he said, “I have a mill inside me, and everything that I eat
goes into it to get ground up.”
“Why, then, you are a miller,” said Tommy Smith.
“In a way, I am,” said the woodpigeon; “for I own a mill. But then, you
know, a miller lives inside _his_ mill, but _my_ mill is inside me.”
“I should so like to see it,” said Tommy Smith.
“You never can do that,” said the woodpigeon in an alarmed tone of
voice; “for you would have to kill me first, and that would be a most
shocking thing to do. But it is there, all the same, though you can’t
see it, and it is called the gizzard.”
“Oh, the gizzard!” said Tommy Smith. “I know what that is, because I
have”—and then he stopped all of a sudden. He had been going to say
that he had tasted it sometimes when there was fowl for dinner, but he
thought he had better not. It didn’t seem quite delicate to talk to a
woodpigeon about eating a fowl.
“The gizzard is the mill that I am talking about,” said the
woodpigeon. “All the food that we eat goes into it, and then it is
ground up, just as corn is ground between two hard stones. But though
our gizzard is very hard, it is not quite so hard as stones are, so we
swallow some small sharp stones, which go into our gizzard, and are
rolled about with the grain and seeds there, and help to crush them.
Then, when they are nice and soft, they are ready to go on into the
stomach. So now you know what sort of thing a gizzard is, and why we
swallow stones.”
“But don’t the stones hurt you?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Do you think we would swallow them if they did?” answered the
woodpigeon. “What a foolish question to ask!”
Tommy Smith stood for a little while thinking about it, and wondering
if _he_ had a mill inside _him_, till at last the woodpigeon said,
“Perhaps you would like to ask me a _sensible_ question.”
“Oh yes,” said Tommy Smith, and he tried to think what was a sensible
question. He had thought of a good many questions to ask, and they had
seemed sensible at the time, but now he began to feel afraid that the
woodpigeon would think them foolish. At last he said, “Please, Mr.
Woodpigeon, where do you live?”
“Oh, in this tree,” said the woodpigeon, “half-way up on the
seventeenth storey.”
“I suppose you mean the seventeenth branch,” said Tommy Smith.
“Of course I do,” said the woodpigeon. “I have my nest there, and my
wife is sitting on the eggs now.”
“Oh, do let me see them,” cried Tommy Smith.
“Oh no,” said the woodpigeon. “They are too high up for that. You would
not be able to climb so far, and you cannot fly as we birds do, for you
are only a poor boy, and have no wings.”
“I wish I had wings,” said Tommy Smith. “Is it very nice to fly, Mr.
Woodpigeon?”
“It is nicer than anything else in the whole world,” the woodpigeon
answered. “Just fancy floating along high above everything, as if the
air were water, and you were a boat. Only you go much quicker than a
boat does, and sometimes you need not use the oars at all.”
“Your wings are the oars, I suppose,” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes, indeed,” said the woodpigeon, “and how fast they row me along.
Swish! swish! swish! and when I am tired I just spread them out and
float along without using them. That is delightful. I call it resting
on my wings.”
“It must be something like swinging, I think,” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes,” said the woodpigeon; “only you swing upon nothing, and you only
swing forwards. Oh, how cool and fresh the air is, even on the hottest
day in summer! The sun seems shining quite near to me, and the sky is
like a great blue sea that I am swimming through; but oh, so quickly!
quicker than any fish can swim. When I look up, I see great white ships
with all their sails set. They are the clouds, and sometimes I am quite
near them. How fast we go! We seem to be chasing each other. And when
I look down, I see green islands far below me. Those are the tops of
trees that I am flying over. My nest is in one of them, and I always
know which one it is. When I am above it, I pause as a boat pauses on
the crest of a wave, and then down, down, down I go, such a deep,
cool, delicious plunge, till at last the leaves rustle round me, and I
am sitting amongst the branches again, and cooing.”
“By your nest?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Oh yes; when I have one,” said the woodpigeon. “I have now, you know,
because it is the springtime.”
“I wish I could see it with the eggs in it,” said Tommy Smith. But it
was no use wishing, he hadn’t wings, and he couldn’t climb the tree.
“How many eggs are there?” he asked.
“Two-oo-oo-oo,” said a voice, higher up amongst the foliage; and Tommy
Smith knew that the mother woodpigeon was sitting there on her nest,
and looking down at him all the while.
“Only two eggs!” he said. “I don’t call that many.”
“It may not be _many_,” said the mother woodpigeon, “but it is the
right quantity. Three would be _too_ many, and one would not be enough.
Two is the only possible number.”
“Oh no, indeed it isn’t,” said Tommy Smith eagerly. “Fowls lay a dozen
eggs sometimes, and pheasants”—
“Possible for a woodpigeon, _I_ meant,” said the mother woodpigeon.
“With fowls, no doubt, anything may take place, but large families are
considered vulgar amongst _us_.”
“Fowls may do what they please,” said the father woodpigeon. “They are
lazy birds, and don’t feed their young ones.”
“That is why they lay so many eggs,” said the mother woodpigeon. “They
don’t mind having a herd of children, because they know they won’t have
to support them.”
Tommy Smith was surprised to hear the woodpigeons talk like this of the
poor fowls, for he had often seen the good mother hen walking about
with her brood of children, calling to them when she found a worm, and
taking care of them so nicely. “It seems to me,” he thought, “that
every animal thinks itself better than every other animal; and they all
think whatever they do right, just because they do it, and the others
don’t. But I suppose _that_ is because they _are_ animals, and not
human beings.” Then he said out loud, “But I am sure the mother hen
feeds her chickens, because I have seen her scratching up worms for
them out of the ground, and”—
“Yes, that is a nice way to feed one’s little ones,” said the mother
woodpigeon. “A raw, live worm! Why, what could be nastier? No wonder
they are forced to pick up things for themselves.”
“If they waited till their parents put a worm into their mouths, they
would starve,” said the father woodpigeon. “It is quite dreadful to
think of.”
“But I think the little chickens like picking up their own food,” said
Tommy Smith. “They look so pretty running about.”
“They would look much prettier sitting in a warm nest, as ours do,”
said the mother woodpigeon.
“And they would feel much more comfortable with you feeding them, my
dear,” said the father.
“And with you helping me, you know,” said the mother bird, and she
stretched her neck over the branch, and cooed softly to her husband,
who looked up at her, and cooed again.
“Then do you both feed them?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Yes,” said the father woodpigeon; “and we take it in turns. You would
not find many cocks who would do that, I think.”
“No; or help to hatch the eggs,” said the mother woodpigeon. “He does
that too. Oh, he _is_ so good!”
“Nonsense!” said the father woodpigeon. “It is what all birds ought to
do-oo-oo-oo.”
“Yes; but it isn’t what they all do do-oo-oo-oo,” said the mother
woodpigeon.
“More shame for those who do not,” said the father woodpigeon; “but I
hope there are not many.” And then they both waited for Tommy Smith to
ask them another question.
“Please, Mrs. Woodpigeon,” said Tommy Smith, “what do you feed your
young ones with?”
“We feed them with whatever we eat ourselves,” said the mother
woodpigeon, “and we always swallow it first, to be sure that it is
quite good.”
This surprised Tommy Smith very much indeed, for it seemed to him
almost as wonderful as eating stones. “Oh! but if you swallow the food
yourselves,” he said, “how can your young ones have it?”
“They don’t have it till we bring it up again,” said the father
woodpigeon. “They put their beaks inside ours, and then it comes up
into our mouths all ready for them to swallow.”
“Isn’t that rather nasty?” said Tommy Smith.
“You had better ask _them_ about _that_,” said the mother woodpigeon.
“_They_ will tell you whether it is nasty or not.”
“_They_ think it _nice_,” said the father woodpigeon.
“And no wonder,” said the mother woodpigeon. “When _we_ swallow it, it
is hard and cold, but when it comes up again for _them_ to swallow, it
is soft and warm, and very like milk. It is not every bird who feeds
its young ones like _that_.”
“Oh no,” said Tommy Smith; “most birds fly to them with a worm or a
caterpillar in their beaks, and give it to them just as it is.”
“That is the old-fashioned way,” said the mother woodpigeon; “but we
are more civilised, and have learnt to _prepare_ our children’s food.”
“Besides,” said the father woodpigeon, “we eat seeds and grains, and
little things like that, and it would take us a very long time to carry
a sufficient number of them to the nest. Our young ones would be so
hungry, and we should not be able to bring them enough to satisfy them,
and then they would starve. So we have thought of this way of managing
it, and I think it is one of the cleverest things in the whole world.”
“Yes, indeed,” cooed the mother woodpigeon, as she looked down from the
branch where she sat on her nest; “one of the cleverest things in the
whole world.”
“Is it only pigeons that do that?” asked Tommy Smith.
“I won’t say that,” answered the mother woodpigeon. “There are some
other birds, I believe, who have followed our example.”
“Yes, they imitate us,” said the father woodpigeon; “but they can never
be pigeons, however much they try to be.”
“Never,” said the mother woodpigeon. “They don’t drink water as we do.
That is the test.”
“Why, how do you drink water?” asked Tommy Smith. “Don’t you drink it
like other birds?”
“I should think not,” said the father woodpigeon. “Other birds take a
little in their bills, and then lift their heads up and let it run down
their throats, but we pigeons would be ashamed to drink in such a way
as that. We keep our beaks in the water all the time, and suck it up
into our throats. That is how _we_ drink, and nothing could make us do
it differently. We don’t lift _our_ heads up.”
“But why shouldn’t you lift them up?” said Tommy Smith; for he thought
to himself, “If all the other birds drink like that, it ought to be the
right way.”
“Why shouldn’t we?” said the father woodpigeon. “Why, because it would
be stupid,—and wrong too,” he added after a pause, during which he
seemed to be thinking.
“There is a still stronger reason,” said the mother woodpigeon, “the
strongest of _all_ reasons; at least, _I_ cannot imagine one stronger.
It would be _unpigeonly_.” And from the tone in which she said this,
Tommy Smith felt that it would be no use to say anything more on the
subject.
“If there was any water here,” said the father woodpigeon, “I would
drink a little just to show you, but the nearest is some way off.
However, you can watch some tame pigeons the next time they are
drinking, for we all belong to one great family, and have the same
ideas upon important points. Now I am going for a short fly, but if you
like to stay and talk to my wife, I shall be back again in an hour.”
But Tommy Smith had to go too, for his lessons began at eleven o’clock,
and of course it would not do to miss them, though it seemed to him
that he was getting a much better lesson from the woodpigeons. “But I
wish,” he said, “before you fly away, Mr. Woodpigeon, you would just
tell me what you do all day.” But as Tommy Smith said this, there was a
rustle and a clapping of wings, and the father woodpigeon was gone.
“He is so impetuous,” said the mother woodpigeon. “There is no stopping
him when he wants to do anything. But _I_ will tell you what we do all
day, so listen. We rise early, of course, and fly down to breakfast at
about six. After three or four hours we come back to the woods again,
and coo and talk to each other there for about an hour. Then we go off
to drink and to bathe, which is the nicest part of the whole day. After
that we feel a little tired and sleepy, so we sit quietly in the woods
till about two. Then it is quite time for dinner, so off we go again
and feed till about five. After dinner it is best to sit quiet and coo
a little. A quiet coo aids digestion. Then we have a nice refreshing
drink in the cool of the evening, and after that we go straight to
tree.”
“Do you mean to bed?” said Tommy Smith.
“Of course I do,” said the mother woodpigeon. “We sleep in trees. They
are the only beds we should care to trust ourselves to.”
“Aren’t they rather hard?” said Tommy Smith.
“Not at all,” said the woodpigeon. “You see, we have our own feathers,
so that makes them feather-beds. They are soft enough and warm enough
for us, you may be quite sure.”
“But it must be very windy up in the trees,” said Tommy Smith.
“That is the great advantage of the situation,” said the mother
woodpigeon. “Our beds are always well aired, so we need never feel
anxious about that. However much it rains they can never be damp, for
how can a bed be damp and well-aired at the same time?”
Tommy Smith couldn’t think of the right answer to this, and the
woodpigeon went on, “So, now, I have told you how we pass the day. What
a happy, happy life! He must have a cruel heart who could put an end to
it.” (And Tommy Smith thought so too.)
“But is that what you always do?” he asked.
“Of course, when there are eggs and young ones it makes a difference,”
said the mother woodpigeon; “and in winter we keep different hours. But
that is our usual summer life, and _I_ think it a very pleasant one.”
“Oh, so do I!” said Tommy Smith. “Thank you, Mrs. Woodpigeon, for
telling me. Now I must go to my lessons, and I will tell them all about
it at home.”
“If you come back afterwards, I will tell you some more,” said the
mother woodpigeon.
Tommy Smith said he would, and then he ran away as fast as he could to
his lessons, for he was a little late. And as he ran, he could hear
the mother woodpigeon saying, “Come back soo-oo-oo-oon! come back
soo-oo-oo-oon!”
CHAPTER X.
THE SQUIRREL
“_The pert little squirrel’s as brisk as can be;
He calls his house ‘Tree-tops,’ and lives in a tree._”
SO Tommy Smith went home to his lessons, and when he had finished them,
he put on his hat and came out again, and began to walk through the
woods to where the mother woodpigeon was waiting for him on her nest.
“Tommy Smith! Tommy Smith! Where are you going to, Tommy Smith?” said
a voice which he had not heard before. At any rate, he had not heard
it talk before. Such a funny little voice it was, something between
a cough and a sob, and if it had not said all those words so _very_
distinctly, it would have sounded like “sug, sug,—sug, sug,—sug, sug,
sug, sug, sug.” Now I come to think of it, Tommy Smith must have heard
it before, for he had often been for walks in the woods. But when a
voice which has only said “sug, sug” before, begins to talk and say
whole sentences, it is not so easy to recognise it. “Who can that be?”
said Tommy Smith; and then he looked all about, but he could see no
one. “Who are you?” he called out; “and where are you calling me from?”
“From here, Tommy Smith, from here,” answered the voice. “Can’t you see
me? Why here I am.”
“Are you the rabbit?” said Tommy Smith; but he thought directly, “Oh
no, it can’t be the rabbit, because it comes from a tree, and no rabbit
could burrow up a tree.”
“The rabbit, indeed!” said the voice. “Oh no, I am not the rabbit. That
_is_ a funny sug, sug, sug, sug-gestion.”
“Oh, I know!” cried Tommy Smith. “It is the”—
“Look!” said the voice. And all at once there was a red streak down
the trunk of a beech tree and along the ground, and there was a little
squirrel sitting at Tommy Smith’s feet, with his tail cocked up over
his head. “Oh!” cried Tommy Smith,—and before he could say anything
else the squirrel said “Look!” again, and there was another red streak,
up the trunk of a pine tree this time,—and there he was sitting on a
branch of it, with his tail cocked up over his head, just the same as
before.
“Oh dear, Mr. Squirrel,” said Tommy Smith—the branch was not a very
high one, and they could talk to each other comfortably—“how fast you
do go!”
“Oh, I like to do things quickly,” said the squirrel. “Mine is an
active nature during three-parts of the year.”
“And what is it during the other part?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Oh, I don’t know anything about it then,” the squirrel answered.
This puzzled Tommy Smith a little. “Why not?” he said.
“Oh, because I’m asleep,” said the squirrel. “One can’t know much about
oneself when one’s asleep, you know; and, besides, it doesn’t matter.”
“But do you go to sleep for such a long time?” said Tommy Smith. “I
know that the frogs and the snakes go to sleep all the winter, but I
didn’t know any regular animal did.”
“Why, doesn’t the dormouse?” said the squirrel. “He’s a much harder
sleeper than I am. I suppose you call _him_ a regular animal.”
“Oh yes,” said Tommy Smith. He had forgotten the dormouse, and, of
course, _he was_ a regular animal. By a “regular animal,” I suppose
Tommy Smith meant one that wasn’t an insect, or a reptile, or a worm,
or something of that sort. Perhaps he couldn’t have said exactly _what_
he meant, but whatever he did mean, you may be sure that it was not
very sensible, because all living creatures are animals, and one is
just as regular as another, if you look at it in the right way.
“Well,” said the squirrel, “I think we are to have a little chat, are
we not? It’s you that must ask the questions, you know.”
“Oh, I should so like to,” said Tommy Smith, “but I promised the mother
woodpigeon to go back and talk to her, and I am going there now.”
“The mother woodpigeon will be on her nest for another hour or two,”
said the squirrel, “so you will have time to talk to her and to me too.
And let me tell you, it is not every little boy who can have a talk
with a squirrel.”
Tommy Smith thought that it was not every little boy who could have
a talk with a woodpigeon either. But he wanted to have both, so he
said, “Very well, Mr. Squirrel, and I hope you will tell me something
interesting about yourself.”
The squirrel only nodded, and said nothing; and then Tommy Smith
remembered that he had to ask the questions, so he said, “Why is it,
Mr. Squirrel, that you go to sleep in the winter? It seems so funny
that you should. I stay awake all the time, you know—except at night,
of course,—so why can’t you?”
“That is easily answered,” said the squirrel. “You have food in the
winter, don’t you?”
“Oh yes,” said Tommy Smith.
“Of course you do,” said the squirrel. “It is all got for you, so you
have no trouble. _I_ have to find mine myself, but in the winter there
is none to find. So if I didn’t go to sleep, I should starve.”
Tommy Smith remembered, then, that the grass-snake had told him that
_he_ went to sleep in the winter, because he could get no frogs to eat;
and the frog had said _he_ did, because he could find no insects. So
he saw that there was the same reason for all these three animals, who
were so different from each other, doing the same thing. “And that’s
why the dormouse goes to sleep too, I suppose,” he said to himself, and
then he began to think that if any other animals went to sleep all the
winter, it must be because _they_ could get no food.
“But I don’t think _I could_ go to sleep if I was very hungry,” he said
to the squirrel; “and if I did, I’m sure I should wake up again very
soon and want my dinner.”
“I daresay you would,” said the squirrel; “and if you couldn’t get it,
you would soon die.”
“But do _you_ never wake up and want _your_ dinner, Mr. Squirrel?” said
Tommy Smith.
“Oh yes,” said the squirrel, “I often wake up, but whenever I do, I can
always get it. Do you know why? Because I am such a clever animal, that
I hide away food in the autumn, so that I can find it in the winter.”
“But you _said_ you couldn’t find food in the winter,” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh, I meant that I couldn’t find it growing on the trees and bushes,”
said the squirrel. “Of course I can find what I have stored away, and
that is enough for all the time I am awake. But it wouldn’t be enough
for the whole winter, so I sleep or doze most of the time, and then I
don’t require anything.”
“But why don’t you store away enough food for the whole winter?” said
Tommy Smith. “Then you needn’t go to sleep at all, you know.”
“Good gracious!” said the squirrel, “that would take a great deal too
much time. It is all very well to put a few things aside, so as to have
something to eat on sunny days—for those are the days I like to wake
up on,—but just fancy having to find dinners beforehand for every day
all through the winter. I could never do that, you know. One dinner to
think about is quite enough as a rule. How should you like to have to
cook two dinners every day, and always put one of them in a cupboard?”
“But you don’t _cook your_ dinners, Mr. Squirrel,” said Tommy Smith.
“And _you_ don’t _look_ for _yours_,” said the squirrel. “_I_ do. You
see,” he went on, “I only begin hiding things away towards the end of
autumn, so there isn’t so very much time.”
“But you have the rest of the year to do it in too,” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh no,” said the squirrel; “that’s quite a mistake. In the spring and
summer I have something else to think about. Besides, there is nothing
worth hiding away then—no acorns, or beechnuts, or filberts, and, of
course, one wants to have something really nice to eat when one wakes
up in the winter. But in the autumn all those things are ripe. The
autumn is the great eating-time. That is the time of the year that I
like best of all.”
“What! better than the spring or the summer?” said Tommy Smith.
“Well, in the spring there are buds on the trees,” the squirrel
reflected; “and the birds’ nests have got eggs inside them. They are
both very nice, though I like nuts better still. But, you see, buds and
birds’ eggs don’t keep, and so”—
“Oh but, Mr. Squirrel,” cried Tommy Smith, “you surely don’t eat the
eggs of the poor birds! Oh, I hope you don’t!” (You see he was not
at all the same Tommy Smith now that he used to be, and he didn’t go
birds’-nesting any more.)
The squirrel looked just a little bit ashamed. “I wouldn’t, you know,”
he said, “if they didn’t make their nests in the trees.”
“Of course they make their nests in the trees!” said Tommy Smith
indignantly. “They have just as much right to the trees as you have,
and I think it is very wicked of you to eat their eggs.”
“Perhaps it is,” said the squirrel; “but, you see, I get so hungry,
and fresh eggs are so nice. By the bye, on what tree did you say the
woodpigeon was sitting? I think I will go there with you.”
“_Indeed_, you shan’t!” said Tommy Smith (and he was _very_ angry). “I
won’t take you there. You want to eat her eggs, I know; and I think you
are a very naughty animal.”
The squirrel looked at Tommy Smith for a little while without speaking,
and then he said, “You know, _I_ never eat hen’s eggs.”
“Don’t you?” said Tommy Smith. It was all he could think of to say, for
he remembered that _he did_ eat hen’s eggs. Of course he knew that that
was different—the peewit had told him that it was—but just at that
moment he couldn’t think of _why_ it was different, and he couldn’t
help wishing that he hadn’t been _quite_ so angry with the squirrel.
“Perhaps you don’t eat too many eggs,” he said in a milder tone.
“Of course not,” said the squirrel. “Wherever there are plenty of
squirrels, there are plenty of birds too, as long as people with guns
don’t shoot them. That shows that we don’t eat too many. And then, as
for our killing trees”—
“Oh, but _do_ you kill trees?” said Tommy Smith. “I didn’t know that
you did that.”
“Why, sometimes when we are very hungry,” said the squirrel, “we gnaw
the bark all round the trunk of a small tree, and then it dies. So
those people who are always finding out reasons for killing animals say
we do harm to the forests. But I can tell them this, that no forest
was ever cut down by the squirrels that lived in it. Men cut down the
forests, and shoot the birds and the squirrels; but if they left them
all three alone, they would all get on very well together. Once, you
know, almost the whole of England was covered with forests. Do you
think it was the squirrels who cut them all down?”
“Oh no,” said Tommy Smith. “It was men with axes, I should think.”
“Yes,” said the squirrel. “It is that great axe of theirs that does
the mischief, not these poor little teeth of mine. It is axes, not
squirrels, that they should keep out of the woods.”
Tommy Smith thought the squirrel might be right, but he wanted to hear
something more about what he did and the way he lived, so he said, “Oh,
Mr. Squirrel, you haven’t told me where you hide the nuts and acorns
that you eat when you wake up in the winter.”
“Oh, in all sorts of places,” said the squirrel. “Sometimes I scrape a
hole in the ground and bury them in it, and sometimes I put them into
holes in the trunks of trees, or under their roots, if they run along
the ground, or into any other little nook or crevice near where I live.
In fact, I put them anywhere where it is convenient, but _not_ where it
is _in_convenient. That is another of my clever notions.”
“But isn’t it rather difficult to find them again when you wake up a
long time afterwards?” said Tommy Smith.
“It would be to you, I daresay,” said the squirrel; “but it is quite
easy to me. You see, I have a wonderful memory, and never forget where
I once put a thing. Even when the snow is on the ground, I know where
my dinner is. It is _under_ a white tablecloth then, instead of being
_upon_ one. I have only to lift up the tablecloth, and there it is.”
“Do you mean that you scrape the snow away, Mr. Squirrel?” said Tommy
Smith.
“Yes, that is what I mean,” said the squirrel; “but I like to talk
prettily. Well, have you anything else to ask me? You had better make
haste if you have, because we squirrels can never stay still for very
long, and I shall soon have to jump away. Look how my tail is whisking.
I always go very soon after that begins.”
Tommy Smith thought that, as the squirrel had proposed having a chat
himself, and had prevented him from going on to the woodpigeon, it was
not quite polite of him to be so very impatient. But he thought _he_
would be polite, at anyrate, so he went on, all in a hurry, “I suppose,
Mr. Squirrel, as you go to sleep in the winter, you have to come out
of the trees and find a place on the ground to”—
“Out of the trees!” exclaimed the squirrel. “I should think not,
indeed. That would be very unsafe. Besides, I should never feel
comfortable if I did not rock with the wind when I was asleep. I should
have a nasty fixed feeling, which would wake me up every minute.”
This surprised Tommy Smith a good deal. He knew that squirrels lived in
the trees all day, but he did not know before that they slept in them
at night too. “Then do you make a nest like a bird, Mr. Squirrel?” he
asked.
“Like a bird, indeed!” said the squirrel. “No; I make one like a
squirrel. It is not necessary for me to imitate a bird. We squirrels
can make nests a great deal better than birds can.”
Tommy Smith did not quite believe this. At anyrate, he felt sure that
a squirrel could not make a better nest than some birds can. But he
remembered that some other birds make only slight nests, or none at
all. “And perhaps,” he thought, “he only means those kinds of birds.”
But he thought he had better not ask the squirrel this, in case he
should be offended, so he only said, “Oh, Mr. Squirrel, will you please
tell me all about your nest, and how you make it, and what it looks
like.”
“Well,” the squirrel began, “it is very large; much larger than you
would ever think, to look at _me_. I could get inside the cap you have
on your head. But how large do you think the house I make, and go to
sleep in, is?”
“Perhaps it is a little larger than my cap,” said Tommy Smith. He did
not think it could be _much_ larger.
“Why,” said the squirrel, “it is larger than you sometimes. You know
those great heaps of hay that stand in the fields—haycocks I think
they call them,—well, if you were to take my house to pieces, it would
sometimes make a heap almost as big as one of them.”
“Would it, really?” said Tommy Smith. “But why is it so large?”
“You see,” said the squirrel, “if the walls were not nice and thick,
they would not keep out the cold properly, and so I have to find a
great deal of moss and grass, and a great many sticks and leaves, to
make it with. Then I have to repair it every year—it would be too
much trouble, you know, to build a new one,—and so it keeps on getting
bigger, because of the fresh sticks and things I bring to it. That is
why my house is so large.”
“And are you always quite comfortable inside it?” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh yes,” said the squirrel; “always comfortable, and always dry. I
knit everything so closely together, that neither the rain nor the snow
can get through.”
“I suppose your house has a door to get in and out by,” said Tommy
Smith.
“It has _two_ doors,” said the squirrel, “a large one and a small one.
Why, what a question to ask! You will be asking if it has a roof to it
next.”
“_Has_ it a roof?” said Tommy Smith. (So, you see, the squirrel was
quite right.)
“Of course it has,” said the squirrel. “The idea of living in a house
without a roof to it! I build it high up in the fork of a tree,” he
went on; “and I lie curled up inside it, as snug and as warm as can be.”
“But isn’t it too warm in the summer?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Oh, I don’t go into it then,” said the squirrel. “The house I have
been telling you about is for the winter, but in the summer I have my
summer-house to go into.”
“Oh, then you have two houses!” said Tommy Smith. “That is cleverer
than a bird, for they have only one nest.”
“_I_ have two,” said the squirrel, “and they are not at all the same.”
“Oh, do tell me what the summer-house is like,” said Tommy Smith.
“It is more lightly built than the winter-house,” said the squirrel,
“and not nearly so large. That is how summer-houses are always built,
you know. Perhaps you have one in your garden.”
“Oh yes, we have,” said Tommy Smith.
“And isn’t it much smaller than the other one?” said the squirrel.
“Oh yes, it is,” said Tommy Smith.
“Well,” said the squirrel, “my summer-house is constructed on the same
principle. I will show it you, if you like, for I really can’t sit
still any longer. Just _look_ at my tail! It will whisk itself off soon
if I don’t jump about.”
“Oh, I should so like to see it, Mr. Squirrel!” cried Tommy Smith.
“Yes, do come down, and”—
“Oh, I’m not coming down,” said the squirrel. “I shouldn’t think of
doing that. I shall go home by the treeway, and you can walk underneath
me. Now then!” And as the squirrel said this, he gave his tail _such_
a whisking, and away he ran along the branch he had been sitting on,
right to the end of it, and then gave _such_ a jump on to the branch of
another tree, and then out of that tree into another one, and so from
tree to tree, so fast that Tommy Smith could hardly keep up with him as
he ran along the ground underneath.
It was not always that the squirrel had to jump from one tree to
another, because their branches often touched each other, and then he
would run along them without jumping at all. Sometimes they would be
very near together without quite touching, and then when he came to
the end of the branch he was on, he would lean forward, and, with his
little fore-paws, catch hold of the tips of several of those belonging
to another tree, and draw them all together, and then give a little
spring amongst them, and away he would go again. This was when he was
in the fir trees. But to see him run down the long, drooping branch of
a beech tree, right to the very end, and then drop off it on to another
one far below—that was the finest sight of all. He did it so very
gracefully. His tail was not turned up over his back now, as it had
been whilst he was sitting up, but went streaming out behind him like a
flag. And sometimes he would whisk it from side to side, and say, “Sug,
sug,—sug, sug,—sug, sug, sug, sug, sug!”
“Here it is!” cried the squirrel at last, from one of the very top
branches of the tree he was on (it was a large beech tree). “Here is
‘Tree-tops.’ Can you see it?”
“Oh yes, I can see the top of the tree you are on,” said Tommy Smith;
“but”—
“Oh, I don’t mean that!” said the squirrel. “‘Tree-tops’ is the name of
my residence. You know, houses have usually a name of some sort. So I
call mine ‘Tree-tops.’ That describes it very well, because it is in a
tree-top, and there are tree-tops all round it.”
“But aren’t all squirrels’ nests like that?” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh yes,” said the squirrel; “and they can all be called ‘Tree-tops.’
I daresay you’ve seen more than one house that was named ‘The Elms,’ or
‘The Firs,’ or ‘The Beeches.’ But now look about, and see if you can
see my summer-house.”
Tommy Smith looked all about near where the squirrel was sitting high
up in the tree, and at last he saw something that looked like a little
black ball. “Is that it?” he said.
“Yes,” said the squirrel, “that’s it. Look! Now I am in it,” and he
made a little spring at the ball of sticks, and disappeared inside
it. The jump made the thin end of the branch swing about, and the
squirrel’s summer-house swung with it, so that it looked as if it might
be shaken off.
“Oh, do come out,” Tommy Smith cried. “I’m sure it can’t be safe in
there.”
“Not safe!” said the squirrel, as he poked his little head out, and
looked down at Tommy Smith. “Do you think I would live with all my
family in a house that was not safe? I have a wife and five children,
you know, and we all live here together.”
“Do you really, Mr. Squirrel?” said Tommy Smith, for he could hardly
believe it.
“Why, of course we do,” said the squirrel; “and great fun it is, too.
You should see how we swing about in a high wind. Delightful!”
Tommy Smith thought that it would make _him_ giddy. “It _must_ be
dangerous,” he said. “Suppose you were all to be swung out, or the
branch were to be blown off, or”—
“Oh, we never think of such things,” said the squirrel. “They are sure
not to happen; and even if they did, we should be all right, somehow, I
daresay.”
“I don’t think you would,” said Tommy Smith. “The woodpigeon might,
perhaps, but, you see, you can’t fly, and so”—
“Oh, can’t I?” said the squirrel. “Why, how did I get here then, from
tree to tree? Didn’t you see me?”
“Oh, but that was jumping,” said Tommy Smith.
“Jumping? Nonsense!” said the squirrel. “Why, I went through the air,
you know, and that is just what one does when one flies, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes, of course,” said Tommy Smith, “but”—
“Very well,” said the squirrel; “then when _I_ jump, I fly.”
“But you haven’t got wings,” said Tommy Smith. He knew he was right,
but he didn’t know how to prove it.
“That makes it all the more clever of me,” said the squirrel. “It is
easy enough to fly if you have wings, but very difficult indeed if you
haven’t. But we squirrels are a clever family, and can do anything.
Why, one of us is called the ‘Flying Squirrel,’ you know; and why
should he be called a flying squirrel if he can’t fly? Not fly? Why,
look here!—look here!—look here!”—and at each “look here!” the
squirrel was in a different tree, and still he went on jumping, or
flying (which do _you_ think it was?), from one to another, until very
soon he was quite out of sight.
And he never came back—at least not whilst Tommy Smith was there. I
think he must have come back at _some_ time or other, to sit in his
little summer-house again with his wife and children. But Tommy Smith
had not time enough to wait for him; so, as soon as he was sure that he
was really gone, he walked away to his friend the woodpigeon.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BARN-OWL
“_In at Tommy Smith’s window the owl has a peep;
He talks to him wisely, and leaves him asleep._”
IT was just the very exact time for a little boy like Tommy Smith to
have been in bed for about five minutes (your mother will know _what_
time it was); so, of course, he _had_ been in bed for about five
minutes, and he wasn’t asleep yet. It was a beautiful night, the window
was open a little at the top, and Tommy Smith was looking through it,
right away to where the moon and the stars were shining. All at once
a great white bird flitted across the window—so silently!—without
making any noise at all. Most birds, you know, make a swishing with
their wings, which you can hear when you are close to them (sometimes
when a good way off too, like the peewit), but this bird made none at
all.
“Oh!” cried Tommy Smith, “whatever was that?” As he said this, the
great white bird flew back again, but—just fancy!—instead of passing
by the window as it did before, it flew up on to it, and sat with its
head inside the room, looking at Tommy Smith. “Oh, who are you?” said
Tommy Smith. And yet he knew quite well that it was an owl. No other
bird could have such great, round eyes, and such a funny wise-looking
face.
The owl sat looking at Tommy Smith for a little while, and then he said
in a very wise tone of voice, “Guess who I am.”
“I think you are the owl,” said Tommy Smith.
“That is right,” said the owl. “But what kind of owl do you think I am?”
“Oh,” said Tommy Smith, “I suppose you are the owl that says ‘Tu whit,
tu whoo.’”
“I am _not_,” said the owl very decisively. “I have never said anything
so absurd in the whole of my life. Why, what does it mean? Nothing,
_I_ should say. It has simply _no_ meaning. What I _do_ say is
‘Shrirr-r-r-r,’ which is very different, is it not now?”
“Yes,” said Tommy Smith, “it is very _different_, but”—
“Of course it is,” said the owl; “when I say _that_, I feel that I am
making a sensible remark.”
Tommy Smith didn’t think that “shrirr-r-r-r” was a _much_ more sensible
remark than “tu whit, tu whoo,” but he thought he had better not say
so, as the owl spoke so positively.
“There are a great many different kinds of owls in the world, you
know,” the barn-owl continued. “Some are very large, as large as an
eagle, and others are a good deal smaller than I am. Here, in England,
there are three kinds,—the wood-owl, the tawny owl (I can’t answer
for what _they_ say), and the barn-owl. Now _I_, thank goodness, am
a barn-owl. I must ask you to remember that, because, naturally, I
shouldn’t like to be mistaken for one of the others.”
“Oh, I’m sure I shall remember it,” said Tommy Smith, “because”—
“Never mind saying why,” said the owl, “it would take too long. Well,
and were you surprised to see me?”
“Oh yes, I was a little,” said Tommy Smith. “I just looked up, and I
saw a great white thing going past the window.”
“I suppose I looked white to you,” said the owl; “but that is because
_you_ are not nocturnal, as I am. But, if you were an owl, like me,
you would see that I am not really white. At anyrate, there is more of
me that isn’t white, than that is. My face is white, I know,—these
beautiful, soft, silky feathers that make two circles round my fine
dark eyes,—my face-discs they are called (what a pity you can’t see
them better!), _they_ are white, and very handsome they look. I am very
proud of them, for I am the only owl in England that has them. But,
after all, my face, though it is beautiful, is only a small part of me.
My back, which is much larger, is not white at all, but a light reddish
yellow. There, now you get the moonlight on it nicely. Such pretty,
delicate colouring. What a pity you are not nocturnal! Then, even my
breast is not quite white. It has some very pretty grey tints about
it. And yet I am called the ‘white owl,’ as well as the ‘barn-owl,’
and often that name is put first in books. It is very annoying. The
barn-owl is a good sensible name; for I do know something about barns,
and I am very fond of catching the mice that live in them. But why
should I be called white, when I have such pretty colours? It is one
of my grievances. You know I have a good many grievances.”
“Have you?” said Tommy Smith. (He knew what a grievance was; one of
those things that ought never to be made out of anything.)
“Yes,” said the owl; “and do you know what I do with them?”
“No,” said Tommy Smith. He didn’t _quite_ understand what the owl meant.
“Well,” said the owl—“mind, I’m going to say something very wise now
(you know I’m an owl),—I put up with them.”
“Oh!” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes,” said the owl. “It will take you a very long time to find out
what a wise remark that was. _You_ couldn’t have made it, you know; I
mean, of course, with the proper expression. I couldn’t myself _once_,
when I was only a young owl, but now that I am grown up, and have a
wife and family to assist me, I can.”
“Oh yes,” said Tommy Smith. (It was all he could think of to say.)
“You’ve no idea,” the owl went on, “what a time it takes one to make
_some_ remarks properly. Now take, for instance, the one, ‘It’s a
sad world!’ It _seems_ very easy, but even if you were to repeat it a
hundred times a day for the next fortnight, you wouldn’t be able to say
it in the way it ought to be said—like this,” and the owl snapped his
beak, and said it again. “_That_ sounds _convincing_,” he remarked;
“but as for a little boy saying it in _that_ way,—no, no.”
“Is it so _very_ difficult,” said Tommy Smith.
“Well, it wants help,” said the owl; “that’s the principal thing.
If you were left to yourself, you’d never manage it; but first one
person helps you, and then another, until at last—after a good many
years, you know—you get into the way of it. It’s like shrugging one’s
shoulders. It takes one half a lifetime to do _that_—_well_.”
“Does it?” said Tommy Smith.
“Ask your father,” said the owl; “only you mustn’t expect him to make
such a wise answer as I should, because, of course, he isn’t an owl,
like me.”
Tommy Smith didn’t think the owl had said anything so _very_ wise, but
he had used a word twice which he didn’t know the meaning of, and so
he said, “Please, Mr. Owl, what does being ‘nocturnal’ mean?”
“To be nocturnal,” said the owl, “is to wake up and see at night, and
go to bed in the daytime, which is what we owls do.”
“Oh yes, I know,” said Tommy Smith; “and if an owl ever _does_ come out
in the daytime, a lot of little birds fly after him and”—
“Yes,” said the owl. “It is very grand, is it not, to be attended in
that way? Common birds have to fly about by themselves, but, of course,
when one is a great owl, it is natural that people should make a fuss
about one.”
“But, Mr. Owl,” said Tommy Smith (he really couldn’t help saying this,
though he was afraid the owl might be angry), “don’t the little birds
fly after you because they don’t like you, and”—
“Dear, dear!” said the owl, “what funny notions little boys do get into
their heads. Not like me, don’t they? That is very ungrateful of them,
because _I_ like _them_ very much. Sometimes I like them almost as much
as a mouse, you know. But, after all, what does it matter whether they
like me or not? The important thing is to have a retinue, all the rest
is of no consequence. Why do you suppose”—The owl stopped all of a
sudden, as if he had just thought of something, and then he said, “But,
perhaps, hearing so many wise things, one after the other, in such a
short time, may be bad for you,—too much strain on the brain, you
know. What do you think?”
“Oh, I don’t think it will do me any harm,” said Tommy Smith.
“Very well,” said the owl; “in the cool of the night, perhaps, it may
not, but I wouldn’t answer for it in the daytime, if the sun was at all
hot. Well, now do you suppose that if all the people in the world who
had retinues were to know what their retinues thought about them, they
would be any the happier for it?”
“I don’t know,” said Tommy Smith.
“Well,” said the owl (I really cannot tell you how wise he looked as he
said this), “_I do_.”
“But what _is_ a retinue?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Oh dear,” said the owl, “I have been forgetting that I am a wise owl,
and that you are only a little boy who doesn’t know long words. A
retinue is an _entourage_, you know, and”—
“But I don’t know what that word means either,” said Tommy Smith (and,
indeed, he thought it was rather a more difficult one than the other).
“Oh dear,” said the owl, “I am forgetting again. Why, when there are a
lot of little birds, who fly round you and twitter whenever you come
out and show yourself, that is what I call having a retinue or an
_entourage_; and, depend upon it, it is a very grand thing to have. The
more birds there are to twitter about you, the grander bird _you_ are.
But it doesn’t so much matter _what_ they twitter, and as for what they
_think_, you had better know nothing at all about _that_.”
It was all very well for the owl to talk in this very wise way, but
Tommy Smith felt sure that the little birds didn’t like him at all, and
only flew round him to annoy him when he happened to come out in the
daytime. And he didn’t think it was such a very grand thing to have
a retinue like that. “They would peck at him too, I daresay, if they
weren’t afraid,” he said to himself; “and no wonder, if he eats them.”
But he wasn’t quite sure whether the owl did this or not, so he thought
he had better ask him before feeling angry with him.
“_Do_ you eat the little birds, Mr. Owl?” he said.
“Not very often,” the owl answered. “The fact is, I don’t so _very_
much care about them. Only, sometimes, when I want a change of diet,
or if they happen to get in my way, I like to try them. They can’t
complain of _that_, you know.”
“Why not?” said Tommy Smith.
“They haven’t time,” said the owl. “You see, I catch them asleep, and
by the time they wake up, they’ve been eaten.”
“I think it’s a great _shame_,” said Tommy Smith; “and I think you’re a
_wicked_ bird to do it. You ought to be shot for doing such things, and
when I am grown up, and have a gun”—
“Wait a bit,” said the owl. “Do you know what you would be doing if you
were to shoot me? Why, you would be shooting the most useful bird in
the whole country. You wouldn’t want to do _that_, I suppose?”
Tommy Smith didn’t quite know what to say to this. “Of course, if you
really _are_ very useful,” he began—
“Well, if you were a farmer,” the owl went on, “I don’t suppose you
would like to have all your corn, and wheat, and hay, and everything
eaten up by rats and mice, would you?”
“Oh no,” said Tommy Smith.
“That is what would happen, though, if it wasn’t for me,” said the
owl. “You see, _I_ eat the rats and mice. They are my proper food,
especially the mice. A full-grown rat is rather large for me—too large
to swallow whole, at anyrate; and I like to swallow things whole if
I can. But the mice and the young rats are just the right size, and
you’ve no idea what a lot of them I eat. I have a very good appetite, I
can tell you, and so have my children. Of course, I have to feed them
as well as myself, so there is plenty of work for me to do. Every night
I fly round the fields and farmyards, and when I see a mouse, or a
rat, or a mole, or a shrew-mouse, down I pounce upon it. Now think how
many owls there are all over the country, and think what thousands and
thousands of rats and mice they must catch every night, and then think
what a lot of good they must do. Or, here is another way. Think how
many rats and mice there are even now, although there are so many owls
to catch them, and think how much harm they do, and think how many more
there would be, and how much more harm they would do if there were no
owls to catch them. That is a lot of thinking is it not? Well, have you
thought of it all?”
“I’ve tried to,” said Tommy Smith.
“It’s difficult, isn’t it?” said the owl. “It’s all very well to say
‘think,’ but the fact is, you _can’t_ think what a useful bird an owl
is—and especially a barn-owl. But, perhaps, you don’t believe me.”
“Oh yes, I do,” said Tommy Smith. “I always thought that owls killed
rats and mice.”
“You can prove it, if you like,” said the owl, “and I’ll tell you
how. I told you that I liked to swallow animals whole, so, of course,
everything goes down—fur, bones, feathers (if it does happen to be a
bird), and all. But I can’t be expected to digest such things as that,
so I have to get rid of them in some way or other. Well, what do I do?
Why, I bring them all up again in pellets about the size and shape of a
potato.”
“Oh, but potatoes are of different sizes and shapes,” said Tommy Smith.
“_I_ mean a smallish-sized oblong potato,” said the owl. “That is
what my pellets look like, only they are of a greyish sort of colour.
Sometimes they are quite silvery.”
“How funny!” said Tommy Smith.
“How pretty, I suppose you mean,” said the owl. “Yes, they _are_
pretty. Now, if you look about under the trees in the fields where I
have been sitting, you will see these pretty pellets of mine lying on
the grass. Pick them up and pull them to pieces, and you will find
that they are nothing but the fur, and skulls, and bones of mice, and
shrew-mice, and young rats. Sometimes the skull and beak of a bird
will be there, and then it will almost always be a sparrow’s. Sparrows
are a nuisance, you know, because there are too many of them. But, as
for mice, there will be three or four of them in every pellet (you can
count them by the skulls), and you know what a nuisance _they_ are.
Let anyone who is not quite sure whether I am a useful bird or not look
at my pellets. Then he’ll know, and if he shoots me after that, he must
either be very stupid, or very wicked, or both. Well, do you still mean
to shoot me when you grow up?”
“Oh no,” said Tommy Smith, “I never will, now that I know how useful
you are, and what a lot of good you do.”
The owl looked very pleased at this, so Tommy Smith thought he would
take the opportunity to ask his advice about something which had been
puzzling him a good deal. “Please, Mr. Owl,” he said, “I promised the
rat not to kill him any more. But, if rats and mice do such a lot of
harm, oughtn’t I to kill them whenever I can?”
“Certainly not,” said the owl. “A little boy should be kind to animals,
and not trouble his head about anything else. No, no; be kind to
animals and leave the rats and mice to _me_.” That was the wise owl’s
advice to Tommy Smith, and _I_ think it was very good advice.
“Where do you live, Mr. Owl?” (that was the next question that Tommy
Smith asked). “I suppose it is in the woods.”
“No,” the owl answered. “Barn-owls do not live in the woods. The
tawny-owls and the wood-owls do. Woods are good enough for them, but we
like to have more comfortable surroundings. We don’t object to trees,
of course. A nice hollow tree is a great comfort, and I, for one, could
not do without it. But it must be within a reasonable distance of a
village, and the closer it is to a church, the better I like it.”
“Do you, Mr. Owl,” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes,” said the owl. “I don’t mind how far I am from a railway station
or even a post office, but the church _must_ be near.”
“I suppose you like to sit in the tower, Mr. Owl,” said Tommy Smith.
“I should think so,” said the owl; “the belfry is there, you know, and
I am so fond of that. It is so nice to sit in one’s belfry and think
of one’s barns, and farms, and haystacks. And then, when the bells
ring, you can’t think what fun that is—especially on the first day of
January when they ring in the New Year. I get quite excited then, and
I give a scream, and throw myself off the old tower, and fly round it,
and whoop and shriek until I seem to be one of the mad bells myself.
For they _are_ mad then, you know. They go mad once every year—on New
Year’s day. People come out to listen sometimes. They look up into the
air, and say, ‘Hark! There they go. It is the New Year now. They are
ringing it in.’ Then all at once the bells stop ringing, and it is
all over; the New Year has been rung in. But what there is new about
it is more than _I_ can say, wise as I am. It all seems to go on just
the same as before, and sometimes I wonder what all the fuss has been
about. I have never been able to see any difference myself between the
last minute of the thirty-first of December and the first minute of
the first of January. On a cold rainy night especially, they seem very
much alike. But, of course, there must _be_ a difference, or the bells
wouldn’t ring as they do.”
“Oh, they ring because it’s the new year, Mr. Owl,” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes, that’s it,” said the owl; “but I should never have found it out
without them.”
Tommy Smith began to think that the owl couldn’t be so _very_ wise
after all, or surely he would have known the difference between
the old year and the new year. He was going to explain it to him
thoroughly, but he was getting rather sleepy by this time, and it is
difficult to explain things when one is sleepy.
So he didn’t, and the owl went on with, “Oh yes, we love churches,
we owls do. We have our nests there, you know, and we could not find
a safer place to make them in. Anywhere else we might be disturbed
and rudely treated, for people are not nearly so polite to us as they
ought to be. But we are always safe in a church, for no one would be so
wicked as to annoy us there. Besides, a church is a wonderful place to
hide in. People pass by it, and come into it, and sit down and go out
again, without having any idea that we are there, and have been there
all the time. They never think of that.”
“What part of the church do you build your nest in, Mr. Owl?” said
Tommy Smith.
“Oh, that is in the belfry too,” said the owl. “The belfry is my part
of the church. I think it must have been built for me, it suits me so
well. I am called the belfry-owl sometimes, and that is a very good
name for me too. But now don’t ask me any more questions, because you
are getting sleepy, and I have something to tell you before you go to
sleep.”
And then the owl told all about the grand meeting that the animals
had held in the woods, and all that they had said to each other, and
what they had decided to do to try and make Tommy Smith a better boy
to animals, and how, at first, they had wanted to hurt him (or even
to kill him), because they were so angry with him, until the owl had
persuaded them not to. It was all the wise owl’s doing. _He_ knew that
the best way to make a little boy kind to animals was to teach him
something about them; and who could teach him so well as the animals
themselves?
CHAPTER XII.
THE LEAVE-TAKING
“_All ‘Tommy Smith’s Animals’ take leave with joy_,
_For they know Tommy Smith is a different boy_.”
WHEN Tommy Smith had gone to sleep, the owl flew away, and he flew to
the same place where he had met the other animals before, and found
them all there again waiting for him (of course, it had been arranged).
Then all the animals began to tell each other about the conversations
they had had with Tommy Smith, and what a very much better boy he had
become. They were all so glad; and, of course, they all thanked the
owl, because it had been his idea.
Then the owl thanked all the animals for thanking _him_, and he said
that it _was_ his idea, but that it might just as well have been the
idea of any other animal there, and he wished that it _had_ been,
because, _then_, he could have called it clever, but _now_, of course,
he couldn’t, for _that_ would be praising himself,—which would
_never_ do. You see, he wanted to be modest. One ought always to be
modest when one makes a speech. And now (the owl said) he was quite
sure that Tommy Smith would never be unkind to animals any more as long
as he lived, because, just before he flew away, he had asked him to
promise that he wouldn’t. But Tommy Smith had just gone off to sleep
then, and so he had had to promise it in his sleep. “And, you know,”
said the owl, “that when a promise is made in _that_ way, it is always
kept.” Then all the animals clapped their—well, whatever they could
clap, and said “Hurrah!” and the meeting broke up.
And the owl was right. As Tommy Smith grew older, and became a big boy,
he found that animals did not talk to him any more in the way they
used to do. It seemed as if they only cared to talk to _little_ boys
or girls. But there was one way of having conversations with them,
which he got to like better and better, and that was to go out into the
woods and fields and watch what they were doing. He soon found that
that was quite as interesting as really talking to them. In fact, it
_was_ talking to them in another kind of way, for they kept telling him
all about themselves, only without speaking. And the more Tommy Smith
learnt about them, the more he liked them, until the animals became his
very best friends. Of course, one is never unkind to one’s very best
friends, and, besides, Tommy Smith had given the owl a promise—in his
sleep.
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MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED
_Edinburgh_
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