“I am not going to tell,” returned Elizabeth, “for I may not use it after all.”
“I think you might tell me,” said Betsy coaxingly, “then if you don’t use it I can.”
“If I don’t use it I will tell you,” replied Elizabeth, and this was the most that Betsy could get her to promise.
Whatever else the theme did it certainly started a fancy for familiar subjects. For the next month or two the gamut was run from crickets to turkey-gobblers, so that when the lynx tale did appear it did not make the sensation of Elizabeth’s first theme, and, in fact, was not so good, as it did not relate personal experience. Betsy wrote a funny story about a toad; Bess presented a deadly uninteresting and commonplace theme about a field-mouse, and it became quite the fashion for the boys and girls to watch the movements of insects, birds, and small animals, so that if Elizabeth did nothing else, she started up an interest in natural history and became an unconscious influence for good, since the children were much more ready than before to protect the little creatures with whom they were beginning to become acquainted.
To be sure the winter was setting in and there was not much animal life to observe, but the very rarity of it gave more interest. A cricket under the hearth, a bird which had lingered longer than usual before making its migration, a Molly Cottontail, a convocation of crows, all these were noted and commented upon. As the boys and girls came and went along the country roads they were alert for any unusual movement in the bushes or sound in the fields.
“What would you do if you met a wild beast?” asked Bert, one day, as he and his sister trudged home.
“I’d run,” replied Elizabeth laconically.
“Pooh! that wouldn’t do any good for it could run faster than you could.”
“Then I’d climb a tree.”
“Suppose it could climb, too; lots of wild beasts can, bears and panthers and wild-cats can.”