Green Meadow Stories - Thornton W. Burgess (best novels for students txt) 📗

Jack, trying not to show too much interest.

“Corn, nice ripe yellow corn, and seeds and acorns and chestnuts,” answered Striped Chipmunk. “And now I’m looking for some big, fat hickory nuts,” he added, and his bright eyes twinkled. “Have you seen any, Happy Jack?”

Happy Jack said that he hadn’t seen any, and Striped Chipmunk remarked that he couldn’t waste any more time talking, and scurried away. Happy Jack watched him go, a puzzled little frown puckering up his brows.

“I believe he knows something about those nuts. I think I’ll follow him and have a peep into his storehouse,” he muttered.

VI Happy Jack Spies on Striped Chipmunk

It’s more important to mind your own affairs than to know what your neighbors are doing, but not nearly so interesting.

Happy Jack

Striped Chipmunk was whisking about among the brown-and-yellow leaves that covered the ground on the edge of the Green Forest. He is such a little fellow that he looked almost like a brown leaf himself, and when one of Old Mother West Wind’s Merry Little Breezes whirled the brown leaves in a mad little dance around him, it was the hardest work in the world to see Striped Chipmunk at all. Anyway, Happy Jack Squirrel found it so.

You see, Happy Jack was spying on Striped Chipmunk. Yes, sir, Happy Jack was spying. Spying, you know, is secretly watching other people and trying to find out what they are doing. It isn’t a nice thing to do, not a bit nice. Happy Jack knew it, and all the time he was doing it, he was feeling very much ashamed of himself. But he said to himself that he just had to know where Striped Chipmunk’s storehouse was, because he just had to peep inside and find out if it held any of the big, fat hickory nuts that had disappeared from under the tall hickory tree while he was quarreling up in the top of it with his cousin, Chatterer the Red Squirrel.

But spying on Striped Chipmunk isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Happy Jack was finding it the hardest work he had ever undertaken. Striped Chipmunk is so spry, and whisks about so, that you need eyes all around your head to keep track of him. Happy Jack found that his two eyes, bright and quick as they are, couldn’t keep that little elf of a cousin of his always in sight. Every few minutes he would disappear and then bob up again in the most unexpected place and most provoking way.

“Now I’m here, and now I’m there!
Now I am not anywhere!
Watch me now, for here I go
Out of sight! I told you so!”

With the last words, Striped Chipmunk was nowhere to be seen. It seemed as if the earth must have opened and swallowed him. But it hadn’t, for two minutes later Happy Jack saw him flirting his funny little tail in the sauciest way as he scampered along an old log.

Happy Jack began to suspect that Striped Chipmunk was just having fun with him. What else could he mean by saying such things? And yet Happy Jack was sure that Striped Chipmunk hadn’t seen him, for, all the time he was watching, Happy Jack had taken the greatest care to keep hidden himself. No, it couldn’t be, it just couldn’t be that Striped Chipmunk knew that he was anywhere about. He would just be patient a little longer, and he would surely see that smart little cousin of his go to his storehouse. So Happy Jack waited and watched.

VII Striped Chipmunk Has Fun with Happy Jack

Thrift is the meat in the nut of success.

Happy Jack

Striped Chipmunk would shout in his shrillest voice:

“Hipperty, hopperty, one, two, three!
What do you think becomes of me?”

Then he would vanish from sight all in the wink of an eye. You couldn’t tell where he went to. At least Happy Jack couldn’t, and his eyes are sharper than yours or mine. Happy Jack was spying, you remember. He was watching Striped Chipmunk without letting Striped Chipmunk know it. At least he thought he was. But really he wasn’t. Those sharp twinkling eyes of Striped Chipmunk see everything. You know, he is such a very little fellow that he has to be very wide-awake to keep out of danger.

And he is wide-awake. Oh, my, yes, indeed! When he is awake, and that is every minute of the daytime, he is the most wide-awake little fellow you ever did see. He had seen Happy Jack the very first thing, and he had guessed right away that Happy Jack was spying on him so as to find out if he had any of the big, fat hickory nuts. Now Striped Chipmunk had all of those fat hickory nuts safely hidden in his splendid new storehouse, but he didn’t intend to let Happy Jack know it. So he just pretended not to see Happy Jack, or to know that he was anywhere near, but acted as if he was just going about his own business. Really he was just having the best time ever fooling Happy Jack.

“The corn is ripe; the nuts do fall;
Acorns are sweet and plump.
I soon will have my storehouse full
Inside the hollow stump.”

Striped Chipmunk sang this just as if no one was anywhere near, and he was singing just for joy. Of course Happy Jack heard it and he grinned.

“So your storehouse is in a hollow stump, my smart little cousin!” said Happy Jack to himself. “If that’s the case, I’ll soon find it.”

Striped Chipmunk scurried along, and now he took pains to always keep in sight. Happy Jack followed, hiding behind the trees. Pretty soon Striped Chipmunk picked up a plump acorn and put it in the pocket of his right cheek. Then he picked up another and put that in the pocket in his left cheek. Then he crowded another into each; and his face was swelled