"Yes!" Dickie Deer Mouse piped up. "You know, I can climb a tree; but I can't crawl out to the tips of the branches, because I'm too heavy. So you'll oblige me if you'll drop a few dozen more of those buds."
The request surprised Mr. Pine Finch. His face told that much.
"Buds!" he exclaimed. "Why do you want buds?"
"I eat them—when I can get them," Dickie Deer Mouse informed him.
The streaked gentleman in the tree looked quite blank.
"What a strange thing to do!" he cried through his nose—or so it seemed.
"Strange!" Dickie Deer Mouse echoed. "Why, you've just been eating some yourself!" And he couldn't help thinking that Mr. Pine Finch was even odder than he sounded.
"That's so," Mr. Pine Finch admitted. "In fact, I may say that I'm very, very fond of tree-buds. But I'm a bird. And of course everybody knows that you're a rodent."
"I'm hungry, anyway," Dickie Deer Mouse retorted. He didn't mind Mr. Finch's calling him names, if only he would drop some more buds.
"You're hungry, eh?" the odd gentleman in the tree replied. "That reminds me that I'm still hungry myself. So I can't stop to talk with you any longer just now."