“Come on, let’s take a little walk in the woods. It is nearly time for chestnuts to be ripe, and we may find some.”
“Oh, I don’t want to go,” Chatter said. “I am tired from having jumped so much. I am going to lie down on the green moss, and go to sleep.”
“Oh, then will you come, Nutto?” asked Slicko, of her brother.
“No, for Fluffy and I are going to hunt hickory nuts,” said the boy squirrel. “You had better come with us. Chestnuts are not ripe yet. You won’t find any. But, if you come with us, you’ll find some hickory nuts.”
“Oh, I think I can find some chestnuts,” spoke Slicko, and then, as neither her brothers nor her sister would come with her, the little girl jumping squirrel started off in the woods by herself.
She ran along on the ground a little way. Then she climbed up a tree, and running out on a branch of that, she leaped from the end of it to the end of another branch, in a tree a little farther on. Slicko was a good jumper.
In this way she hurried on until she was quite a way from her home-nest.
All of a sudden, Slicko heard a noise in the bushes, as if some big animal were breaking a way through them.
“My! I hope that isn’t the hunter-man and his dog!” exclaimed Slicko in a whisper to herself. “I had better be careful, and take a look before I go on any farther.”
So the little jumping squirrel cuddled down under some leaves on the tree branch where she was sitting, and peered out. At first she could see nothing, except the bushes below her waving as something pushed through them. Whatever it was, it seemed to be coming nearer and nearer her tree.