“Just lovely,” said her sister, Mollie.
“Well, that’s one trick,” the boy said. “It’s the easiest of all. Now that she knows the wheel won’t hurt her, she’ll often take a whirl in it.”
“Yes,” said Slicko to herself, as she heard Bob say this, “I think I shall.”
And, from then on, Slicko was no longer afraid of the whirling wheel of her cage. Bob did not have to put any more nuts in it to get her to go in. Slicko liked it, and went in herself, several times a day. It gave her something to do—like playing a game.
The cage where Slicko was kept was too small to let her run about and jump very much, and the wheel was just the very thing. On that, Slicko could pretend she was running a race, as she used to do with her brothers and sister in the woods.
“Oh, I wonder what has become of Chatter, and all the rest of them,” thought Slicko many times, as she thought of her former home. “And I wonder if I shall ever see them again!”
“What are you doing, Bob?” asked Mollie, one day as she saw her brother pasting some paper over a little wooden hoop. It was just like those the men in the circus jump through, only smaller.
“I am getting ready for another trick for Slicko,” he said.
“Do you think you can get her to jump through one of those paper covered hoops?” asked Sallie.
“I think so,” replied Bob. “I’m going to try.”