"I've had a nice, nice time. Do you want to swing?"
"No," I returned. "Let us find a cool place and sit down."
There were older couples who had achieved such a search and were enjoying it evidently. We plunged a little deeper in the forest.
"Oh, I do love trees so much, a great woods full of them. I wish they grew up all around the town."
I was used to its barrenness, but the beauty and awe of this touched me. A woodpecker ran up and down a tree, surveying it with his beady black eyes and drumming with his bill. Then he paused, turned his head this way and that with a dainty sort of assurance, and suddenly drew a worm out of his snug nest and away he flew. We looked at each other and laughed.
Then a squirrel came scampering along and eyed us suspiciously, but as we did not stir he grew braver. How pretty he was with his bushy tail like a waving plume.
"Oh, I wish I had a bit of bread," cried Ruth, "I have two quite tame ones at home. They beg so prettily that I love to tease them a little, and sometimes I hide the bread to see them hunt for it. They have a home in that old gnarled tree. I found it out one time, and I was afraid the cat would get at them."
"Oh, they would fight the cat if she poked her nose in the hole."
"I hope they would."
Great black ants scurried about this way and that, listening or thinking, it seemed, and occasionally one dragged a burden as big as himself. What queer people they were! And, later on, when I came to know more about them, I was filled with a curious admiration.