Mister Chipmunk filled his two big pockets with the nice cherry pits, and ran for home as fast as his little legs would carry him.
Gabriel Chipmunk’s pockets were in his cheeks, and when he had both pockets full of cherry pits, his head looked larger than all the rest of him. Billy Rabbit saw him running through the woods. “Who on earth is that?” said Billy Rabbit to himself. “That big head is running around without anybody! Help! Help!” and Billy Rabbit ran home and told Mrs. Rabbit that he had just seen a terrible head running through the woods.
When Gabriel Chipmunk got home he dumped his two pocketsful of nice cherry pits into his granary bins, and called Mrs. Chipmunk to come and help him, and both of them worked as fast as they could and in a very short time all the nice cherry pits from under Robert Robin’s big basswood tree were safe and snug in Mister Gabriel Chipmunk’s granary under his old home stump.
Both of them were so tired that they went to bed and slept until the next morning.
Towards night Mister Robert Robin perched on the top of his big basswood and sang his “Cherry Song,” and while he was singing he heard some one coming through the woods. It was the farmer’s hired man. He was going to get some of the cherry pits to plant in a box.
He scuffed his feet among the leaves, and looked, and looked, but he could not find even just one cherry pit.
“Where did all those cherry pits go?” he asked himself. “There was forty-’leven hundred of ’em here this forenoon, and now they are as scarce as hen’s teeth! Some bird must have picked up every last one of them! I wouldn’t have cared, only I was so sure about their bein’ cherry pits, and the farmer hates to get beat in an argument—but now I’ll never hear the last of fryin’ them mittens.”
The hired man climbed over the fence and stood still. He was listening to Robert Robin’s cherry song.
“Cherry sweeter!
Cherry sweeter!
Cherry sweet!
Cherry sweet!
Call Peter—
Call Peter!
Call Pete,
Call Pete!
Cherry sweet!
Cherry sweeter!
Cherry sweet!”
“That robin is a fine singer, and he is singing about cherries all right!” said the hired man, “and if I knew as much as he does about what became of those cherry pits, I could go right to ’em, this minute!”