“Come now! The girls have jumped, and you boys mustn’t let them get ahead of you!” called Mr. Squirrel, to Nutto and Fluffy. “Come on, jump down here.”
Well, of course the boy squirrels weren’t going to let the girl squirrels beat them, so first Nutto jumped, and then Fluffy.
“There, now you have all learned to jump,” said Mrs. Squirrel. “Of course this is only the beginning. You must practice every day, just as you did when you were learning to climb trees, by sticking your sharp toe-nails in the soft bark. Every day you do a little jumping.”
“But why, Mamma?” asked Slicko. “Is that the secret?”
“That is the secret,” answered Mr. Squirrel. “You must learn to jump because your mamma saw a hunter-man, with a gun and dog in our woods this morning, and we must be ready to run away, and hide, if he should find our nest.
“And, as you cannot always run or walk, and climb trees, you must need to know how to jump, so you can jump out of danger. That is why we gave you jumping lessons to-day. Now, when you are rested, you must jump some more. And you must learn to jump up as well as jump down, though jumping down is easier.”
The squirrel children asked many questions about the hunter-man, with his dog and gun, and Papa and Mamma Squirrel told their little ones all they knew, warning them always to hide when they saw a man with a gun.
“Well, I’m going to learn to jump farther and higher,” said Slicko. “No hunter is going to catch me, if I can help it.”
So Slicko began practicing jumping, going from one tree branch to another, up and down, and sideways. The papa and mamma squirrel watched on all sides while their children were jumping, to make sure the hunter-man did not come.
Whether it was because Slicko was larger and stronger than her brothers and sister, or because she practiced harder, I do not know. But it is certain that, in a few days, Slicko was the best jumping squirrel in that part of the woods. She could jump farther than could Chatter, and even though Nutto and Fluffy were boy squirrels, Slicko could beat them.