She did not mind the dog’s chasing and barking at the squirrels. They were well out of reach. One excited squirrel leaped from a tree top into the thick branches of another tree, sailing through the air “just like an aeroplane.” Carolyn May had seen aeroplanes and thought she would like to go up in one.
“Of course,” she explained, “not without somebody who knew all about coming down again. I wouldn’t want to get stuck up there.”
Here and there they stopped to pick up the glossy brown chestnuts that had burst from their burrs. That is, Carolyn May and her uncle did. Prince, after a single attempt to nose one of the prickly burrs, left them strictly alone.
“You might just as well try to eat Aunty Rose’s strawberry needle cushion, Princey,” the little girl said wisely. “You’ll have a sorer nose than Amos Bartlett had when he tried to file it down with a wood rasp.”
“Hum!” ejaculated Mr. Stagg, “whatever possessed that Bartlett child to do such a fool trick?”
“Why, you know his nose is awfully big,” said Carolyn May. “And his mother’s always worried about it. She must have worried Amos, too, for one day last week he went over to Mr. Parlow’s shop, borrowed a wood rasp, and tried to file his nose down to a proper size. And now he has to go with his nose all greased and shiny till the new skin grows back on it.”
“Bless me, what these kids will do!” muttered Mr. Stagg.
“Now, I’ve got big feet,” sighed Carolyn May. “I know I have. But I hope I’ll grow up to them. I wouldn’t want to try to pare them off to make them smaller. If they have got such a long start ahead of the rest of me, I really believe that the rest of me will catch up to my feet in time, don’t you?”
“Nothing like being hopeful,” commented Mr. Stagg drily.
It was just at that moment that the little girl and the man, becoming really good comrades on this walk, met with an adventure. At least, to Carolyn May it was a real adventure, and one she was not to forget for a long, long time.