CHAPTER III.
The raccoon’s story was received with general approbation; and the grandmother, in particular, declared she had not passed so pleasant an hour for a very long time. The good woman was gradually becoming accustomed to her strange visitors, and ventured to address them with a little more freedom, though she still trembled and clutched her knitting-needles tighter when she heard the bear’s deep tones.
“It is really very good of you all,” she said, “to take compassion upon my loneliness. Before I came to this cottage I lived in a large town, where I had many friends, and I find the change very great, and the life here very solitary. Indeed, if it were not for my dear little Toto, I should lead quite the life of a hermit.”
“What is a hermit?” asked the bear, who had an inquiring mind, and liked to know the meaning of words.
“It is a crab,” said the parrot. “I have often seen them in the West Indies. They get into the shells of other crabs, and drive the owners out. A wretched set!”
“Oh, dear!” cried the grandmother. “That is not at all the kind of hermit I mean. A hermit in this country is a man who lives quite alone, without any companions, in some uninhabited region, such as a wood or a lonely hillside.”
“Is it?” exclaimed the bear and the squirrel at the same moment. “Why, then, we know one.”
“Certainly,” the squirrel went on; “Old Baldhead must be a hermit, of course. He lives alone, and in an uninhabited region; that is, what you would call uninhabited, I suppose.”
“How very interesting! Where does he live?” asked Toto. “Who is he? How is it that I have never seen him?”
“Oh, he lives quite at the other end of the wood!” replied the squirrel; “some ten miles or more from here. You have never been so far, my dear boy, and Old Baldhead isn’t likely to come into our part of the wood. He paid us one visit several years ago, and that was enough for him, eh, Bruin?”