“No, I am not sick of peanuts,” she continued. “But what has that to do with your dream?”
“Everything,” he went on. “Oh, Hazel, I dreamed of a most wonderful tree where all kinds of nuts—hickory, walnuts, chestnuts and hazel-nuts—grew side by side on the same branch. We must hurry and get there before they are all gone,” and he jumped up so quickly that Hazel went spinning round and round the branch she was holding on to with her sharp little claws.
Now, Hazel was a good little squirrel who always talked things over with her mother, so as they were hurrying away across the park she suddenly stopped. “I forgot to tell mother where I was going,” she said.
Her play-fellow grabbed her by the tail. “It’s to be a surprise,” he whispered. “We will make little baskets of dry twigs and carry home enough for everybody.” This sounded fine.
The pink in the sky was by now beginning to fade. Presently Mr. Sun poked his head over the hilltops far away. He saw the runaway children and he thought to give them a scare that would send them home. So he bounded out from behind a cloud and sent a long, dark shadow right across the path in front of them.
“Oh, my,” cried Hazel, “what’s that?”
Both children were so startled they jumped straight up in the air and landed on the other side of the dark shadow.
“Let’s go home,” suggested Hazel, but when they turned to go they saw their own shadows and of course they knew them. How they laughed then, for who would think of being afraid of a lifeless shadow?
By and by they met a workman. He had a dinner-pail in his hand and in his pockets peanuts for the squirrels, for every morning and night he passed through the park. Now, the good citizens of the town had made laws that no one should harm a squirrel and the squirrels knew this. So Hazel and Bushy-Tail were not afraid of the workman and when he knelt down and held out some nuts to them, they ran right up to him, chattering all the while.
Bushy-Tail took one of the nuts, cracked it with his teeth and, holding it with both hands, ate very greedily. For, you see, the sight of the nuts reminded him he had not eaten any breakfast, and suddenly he became very hungry.