"Of course not," answered the Babe in an injured voice. "If it had been a bear, I'd have been frightened."
"Oh!" said Uncle Andy. "I see. Well, what was it like? Seems to me you didn't take much time to look at it, even if you weren't frightened."
"I did look," protested the Babe, glancing again, a little nervously, at the bushes. "It was like—like a tre-_mend_ous big fat guinea pig, with a fat tail and all kind of rusty gray."
"Now, that's not at all bad, considering you were in something of a hurry," said Uncle Andy approvingly. "That's really a very good description of a woodchuck. No one could possibly mistake it for a lobster or a lion."
"Of course, I couldn't see it very plain," added the Babe hastily, wondering if Uncle Andy was laughing at him. "But why did it run at me that way?"
"You see," said Uncle Andy seriously, repenting of his mockery, "the woodchuck is a queer, bad-tempered chap, with more pluck than sense sometimes. Once in a while he would run at anything that was new and strange to him, no matter how big it was, just to see if he couldn't frighten it."
"Would he run at you or Bill that way?" demanded the Babe in a voice of awe at the very thought of such temerity.
"Oh, he has seen lots of men," replied Uncle Andy. "We're nothing new to him. But most likely he had never seen a small boy before, and he did not know what kind of an animal it was. The very fact that he did not know made him angry—he's sometimes so quick-tempered, you know!"
"I'm glad he didn't frighten me—so very much!" murmured the Babe, beginning to forget the exact degree of his alarm.
"I noticed you got out of his way pretty smart!" said Uncle Andy, eyeing him from under shaggy brows. "But perhaps that was just because you were in a hurry to tell me about it!"