Page:Bambi A Life in the Woods (1928).pdf/74

hold his little forepaws elegantly in front of him, nod his head this way and that, laugh with his jolly eyes, and, in a twinkling, say a lot of comical and interesting things. Then he would come down again, so swiftly and with such leaps, that you expected him to tumble on his head.

He twitched his long tail violently and called to them from overhead, “Good day! Good day! It’s so nice of you to come over.” Bambi and his mother stopped.

The squirrel ran down the smooth trunk. “Well,” he chattered, “did you get through it all right? Of course, I see that everything is first rate. That’s the main thing.”

He ran up the trunk again like lightning and said, “It’s too wet for me down there. Wait, I’m going to look for a better place. I hope you don’t mind. Thanks, I knew you wouldn’t. And we can talk just as well from here.”

He ran back and forth along a straight limb. “It was a bad business,” he said, “a monstrous uproar! You wouldn’t believe how scared I was. I hunched myself up as still as a mouse in the corner and hardly dared move. That’s the worst of it, having to sit there and not move. And all