Again, the next morning, the Papa Bear called the little Cub Bear very early, and told him that he would like to have him go out again that day, and that if he would be very careful he could go farther than he had ever gone before.
So this time the little Cub Bear went a long, long way, and came to a place he had never been before, either with his papa or without him, and there was a great oak tree, and he saw high up in this tree little squirrels running about on the limbs of the trees, with their bushy tails over their backs. And the little Cub Bear, after he had found something to eat, came back and watched the squirrels, and he saw that they were gathering nuts and carrying them in their little paws into holes in the top of the tree. He noticed, too, that sometimes these little squirrels would sit on the end of the limb, just as the 'coon did, and take in their little forepaws a nut and bite through the shell of the nut very quickly, and get out the meat and eat it. He thought this was very, very nice, but he wondered why they did not eat all the nuts, and why they took some of them in the hole of the tree.
So that night, when he returned home, he talked to his papa about the little squirrels he had seen that day, with their beautiful bushy tails curling up over their backs, and their bright little eyes, and their sharp little teeth and soft fur; then he said:
"Papa, why do the little squirrels take some of the nuts into the hole in the tree?"
Papa Bear told him that it was because they were saving the nuts for the winter, when the snow was on the ground and there were no nuts to be had, and that the little squirrels spent all the winter time inside the tree, where it was warm and cozy; and that whenever they were hungry, they had this store of nuts to eat, and that the little squirrels seemed to know whether it was going to be a long, hard winter, or whether the winter was going to be mild, and that they knew just how many nuts to put away for the winter, whether it was short or long.
When it was night time, the little Cub Bear cuddled up in a ball and said:
"Papa, I want you to tell me a story before I go to sleep, about the inside of a nice warm tree, where the squirrels live."
And so the Papa Bear told this story: