“Oh, this is lovely!” thought Slicko. “It is much nicer than my wheel in the cage. I am glad I ran away. I am never going back in the big house again.”
You see, after all, though wild animals may seem contented to be pets, they always want to be free as they were at first.
Slicko began to look all over the tree to see if any nuts grew on it. She was not yet old enough to know that there would be no nuts until fall. Nor could she tell that the tree she was in was a pear tree, and never grew nuts. There would be no pears, either, until late in the summer.
Slicko was beginning to feel hungry. True, she had eaten her breakfast before running away, but now she felt hungry again. There seemed to be nothing to eat in the tree where she was hiding. It was no fun to be hungry.
“I must see about getting something to eat,” thought Slicko. “I’ll stay up here awhile, and then I’ll go down and hunt for some nuts or bits of apple. Oh, I’ll have a fine time, and I won’t have to jump through paper hoops, or do any tricks.”
Pretty soon Slicko, who sat on a limb of the tree where she could look at the window of the room where she used to live, heard the voice of Bob, her little master.
“I say!” cried Bob, “have any of you seen Slicko?”
“She was in her cage, a little while ago,” said Mollie. “Isn’t she there now?”
“No, and her cage is open, and so is the window of the room,” went on Bob. “I’m afraid she has run away, or else maybe Muffins has caught her.”
“Oh, you bad boy, to say such a thing!” cried Sallie. “Muffins wouldn’t take Slicko. More likely it’s Rover!”