To the squirrels this had been a day of unusual anxiety, for the school had taken up again after its two weeks' holidays, and the boys were a little more inquisitive than usual, and unfortunately, the snow happened to be good for packing. It had been a bad day for nerves, and Mr. Bushy, as the boys called him, found it impossible to keep his tail in one position for more than one second at a time. It was in vain that his more sedate and self-controlled partner in life remonstrated with him and urged a more philosophic mind.
“It's all very well for you, my dear,” Mr. Bushy was saying, rather crossly I am afraid, “to urge a philosophic mind, but if you had the responsibility of the family upon you—Goodness gracious! Owls and weasels! What in all the woods is that?”
“Can't be the wolves,” said Mrs. Bushy, placidly, “it's too early for them.”
“Might have known,” replied her husband, quite crossly; “of course it's those boys. I wonder why they let them out of school at all. Why can't they keep them in where it is warm? It always seems to me a very silly thing anyway, for them to keep rushing out of their hole in that stupid fashion. What they do in there I am sure I don't know. It isn't the least like a nest. I've seen inside of it. There isn't a thing to eat, nor a bit of hair or moss. They just go in and out again.”
“Well, my dear,” said his wife, soothingly, “you can hardly expect them to know as much as people with a wider outlook. We must remember they are only ground people.”
“That's just it!” grumbled Mr. Bushy. “I only wish they would just keep to themselves and on the ground where they belong, but they have the impudence to come lumbering up here into our tree.”
“Oh, well,” replied his partner, calmly, “you must acknowledge they do not disturb our nest.”
“And a good thing for them, too,” chattered Mr. Bushy, fiercely, smoothing out his whiskers and showing his sharp front teeth, at which Mrs. Bushy smiled gently behind her tail.
“But what are they doing now?” she inquired.
“Oh, they are going off into the woods,” said Mr. Bushy, who had issued from his hole and was sitting up on a convenient crotch. “And I declare!” he said, in amazed tones, “they haven't thrown one snowball at me. Something must be badly wrong with them. Wonder what it is? This is quite unprecedented.”