Meantime, the fawns throve on the Jersey milk. Though too shy to mingle with the cows and sheep in the pasture lot, they spent their days in a clump of alders down by the brook.
“Won’t they be happy when they get their own mother back?” the Boy exclaimed to his father one evening.
The Father looked at his son in a puzzled way.
“The doe has disappeared,” he announced. “I had just taken the splints off her leg. It was healed as good as new. Thought I’d turn her loose in the pasture to limber up a bit, when—would you believe it?—she leaped clean over that fence, and off into the woods out of sight.”
“Honestly?” exclaimed the Boy. “Without so much as a thank you! And what will become of her now?”
“Oh, she’ll be all right. But isn’t it a shame now we didn’t let her have her fawns?”
“Perhaps we can keep them ourselves,” ventured the Boy wistfully, for he loved pets. “We could tame them and let them grow up with the cows. They’re half tame already.”
“I don’t believe a wild thing is ever really happy that way,” mused the Farmer. “Do you?”
“No, perhaps not,” decided the Boy. “And besides, their mother will break her heart if she never finds them again.”
“She’ll feel badly, of course. But don’t you see, the fawns will take to the woods again, sooner or later, unless we keep them tied all the time. And then do you know what would happen? They wouldn’t know how to take care of themselves, without their mother’s training.”