“Oh, ho! A silver fox! Well, I suppose he’ll be too proud to speak to us common chaps!”
“Oh, no, I won’t,” said Sharp Eyes quickly. “I’m a fox, just like you; and I’ll tell you some of my adventures if you’d like to hear them.”
“There he goes! Proud of his adventures!” sniffed a red fox.
Sharp Eyes wasn’t proud at all, as we know. He only wanted to be friendly, but the other foxes would not be, and kept to themselves, leaving Sharp Eyes on one side of the cage.
One yellow fox tried to bite Sharp Eyes when our friend was eating some meat in the den, but Sharp Eyes soon showed that he had as keen teeth as any of them, and then they were glad to let him alone.
But Sharp Eyes did not have a happy time.
In the first place he was lonesome. He wanted to make friends with the other foxes, but they would not. Many, many times he wished he was back in the woods with Winkle and Twinkle, playing in the bushes, or running in and out of the hollow log.
After a while Sharp Eyes grew so lonesome and unhappy that he did not eat as much as he ought. Instead of keeping fat, and growing nicely, he became thin.
“This will never do,” said one of the park animal men one day, when he stopped to look in the fox den. “That silver chap isn’t doing well at all. What’s the matter with him?”
“I guess he and the other foxes don’t get along well together,” answered the keeper who had charge of feeding the foxes. “The silver one keeps to himself all the while.”