'How can you have chestnuts now?' asked Maia. Mrs. Bushy looked at her patronisingly.
'Ah, to be sure,' she said, 'the young lady does not know all about our magic preserving cupboards, and all the newest improvements. To be sure, it is her first visit to Squirrel-Land,' she added encouragingly; 'we can make allowance. Now, lead the way, my dears, lead the way,' she said to her nine treasures, who thereupon set off with a rush, jumping and frisking and scuttering along, till Maia could hardly help bursting out laughing again, while she and Silva and Rollo and Waldo followed them into the supper-room, where, at the end of a long narrow table, covered with all sorts of queer-looking dishes, decorated with fern leaves, Papa Bushy, in a moss arm-chair, his tail comfortably waving over him like an umbrella, was already installed.
'I beg your pardon, my dear young friends,' he began, in a rather deeper, though still squeaky voice, 'for receiving you like this. Mrs. Bushy will have made my apologies. This unfortunate attack of gout! I am, I fear, too actively inclined, and have knocked myself up!'
'Ah, yes,' said Mrs. Bushy, shaking her head; 'I'm sure if Mr. Bushy goes once a day to the top of the tree, he goes twenty times.'
'But what does he go for if it makes him ill?' exclaimed Maia.
Mrs. Bushy looked at her and gasped, Mr. Bushy shut his eyes and waved his paws about as if to say, 'We must excuse her, she knows no better,' and all the young Bushys ducked their heads and squeaked faintly,—evidently Maia had said something very startling. At last, when she had to some extent recovered her self-control, Mrs. Bushy said faintly, looking round her for sympathy:
'Poor child! Such deplorable ignorance; but we must excuse it. Imagine her not knowing—imagine any one not knowing what would happen if Mr. Bushy did not go to the top of the tree!'
'What would happen?' said Maia, not sure if she felt snubbed or not, but not inclined to give in all at once.
'My poor child,' said Mrs. Bushy, in the most solemn tone her squeaky voice was capable of, 'the world would stop!'
Maia stared at her, but what she was going to say I cannot tell you, for Silva managed to give her a little pinch, as a sign that she had better make no more remarks, and Mrs. Bushy, feeling that she had done her duty, requested everybody to take their places at table. The dishes placed before them were so comical-looking that Rollo and Maia did not know what to reply when asked what they would have.