“Tick-tack! Tick-tack! Tick—t-a-c-k!” scolded some one directly over his head.
“Don’t be cross, Mr. Squirrel!” said Sunny Boy politely. “Grandpa says when you make a noise like that you’re either frightened or want folks to go away and not bother you. I’m going in a minute.”
Throwing the crumbs of the gingerbread into the brook for the little fish to enjoy, Sunny Boy marched straight for the woods. He had never been there alone, and somehow they seemed darker and deeper than he remembered them when Grandpa or Daddy had been with him.
“I’ll begin to look now,” said Sunny, talking to himself for company. And how small his voice sounded, and thin, under those tall, silent trees!
“Maybe I’ll see a Brownie,” Sunny continued. “I think Bruce might have come all the way. What was that?”
A twig snapped under his foot with a sharp noise. Noises are always creepy when one is alone in a strange place. Sunny sat down to rest a minute, on a half-buried tree-stump.
A black beetle came out, ran along a weed-stalk, climbed up to the top and sat there, regarding Sunny steadily.
“Do you like living here?” asked Sunny politely. “I wish you could talk, Mr. Beetle. Maybe you’ve seen the Lib’ty Bonds somewhere an’ you’d tell me just where to look.”
The beetle winked his beady eyes rapidly, but of course he didn’t say a word.
Presently a striped chipmunk appeared on a stump opposite the one where Sunny sat, and he, too, stared at Sunny intently.