Faline immediately screamed. Bambi took hold of himself. He was, of course, just as startled as Faline and her scream only made it worse, but her voice had sounded so helpless that he felt pity for her and forced himself to reassure her.
“What’s the matter then?” he whispered anxiously, but there was a tremble in his voice. “What’s the matter. He won’t do us any harm!”
Faline simply continued screaming.
“Don’t get so upset, my love. It’s not nice,” Bambi urged her. “It’s ridiculous to always be afraid of these gentlemen. They are relatives of ours, after all.”
But Faline did not want to hear anything about their being relatives. She stood there, very stiff, stared at the stag as he went unbothered on his way, and she screamed and screamed.
“Pull yourself together,” scolded Bambi, “what’s he going to think of us?”
There was nothing that could have calmed Faline down. “He can think what he wants,” she shouted, and went on screaming. “Ah-oh! Ba-oh! ... nobody should ever be as big as that!”
She continued to scream, “Ba-oh!” and went on to say, “Leave me alone ... I can’t help it! I have to! Ba-oh! Ba-oh! Ba-oh!”
The stag was now standing in the little clearing and looking languidly in the grass for something tasty to eat.
As he looked alternately at Faline as she panicked and at the calm and relaxed stag, something rose up in Bambi. The words of comfort he had offered to Faline had also helped him to overcome his own alarm at the sight of the stag. Now he scolded himself for falling into a pitiful state every time he saw the stag; a state where horror, excitement, admiration and inferiority were all mixed together and made him suffer.