She used to spy in the same way on Old Man Red Fox, and Frisky, his promising young hopeful.
In fact, what with Frisky spying on the fawns, and the fawns watching Frisky, these children of hostile tribes kept pretty close track of one another.
The summer passed on the whole, however, with no more adventure than the sound of the lonely “Hoo-woo-o-o-o” of a loon at twilight, or the sudden whirr of a startled pheasant’s wings, or a quarrel between some wicked red squirrel caught robbing a crow’s nest. (Or was it a crow that had robbed the squirrel’s little hoard, and was getting handsomely scolded for his villainy?).
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CHAPTER X.—WILD GRAPES.
It had been one of those cool, crisp days when the sun shone just warm enough to feel good to the furred and feathered folk. Frisky, the Red Fox Pup, had been creeping up on a flying squirrel, who sat nibbling the ripe berries of the Solomon’s Seal with her three little ones beside her, when the entire family took alarm and went leaping back to the beech-nut tree.
Now Frisky had not reached the age of six whole months in vain. He had sharp eyes, and he used them. And he had never seen a squirrel that could spread sail like that. He felt that his eyes must have deceived him.
He forgot his surprise at the very next turn of the trail, when he suddenly spied a tangle of wild grape vine that hung in a canopy of the luscious purple clusters over the stag-horn sumac.