Amos was much encouraged by his initial success. Already he was doubtless laying ambitious plans looking to further triumphs along the line of what he was pleased to style “auto-photography,” because each sitter must of necessity snap off his own picture.
Still, as the morning advanced Elmer could not help noticing that now and then Amos would allow his gaze to wander to this or that point. Perhaps he may have been figuring out his next step in the campaign; but Elmer, noting the anxious expression once more upon the other’s face, decided that Amos was thinking of his father.
Perk had developed a sudden interest in woods lore. Up to then this subject had never interested him to any extent; in fact, he had been more apt to display concern over a rabbit in the pot, than one bounding over its native heath.
He now learned that there was a world of deeply instructive things to be picked up in connection with all these smaller creatures. Once Elmer and Wee Willie, that afternoon, began to give up some of the knowledge they had acquired, Perk started a flow of questions that seemed capable, like the poet’s brook, of “running on forever.”
The boys were good-natured, and really felt disposed to encourage Perk in his pursuit of knowledge. It might be a turning point in the career of easy-going Perk. Curiosity, along these lines, once aroused awakens interest, and begets a desire to know more and more, until all animated nature takes on a new and lively character.
“Well, now,” for one thing Perk remarked, “I’ve seen a rabbit start running when I crossed a field, and then act queer, as if suddenly lame. Yes, I can remember chasing bunny, and nearly overtaking the little bunch with the cottontail; when all at once it’d spin away like lightning, leaving me out of breath, and feeling foolish. So that was all a sharp trick, was it, Elmer?”
“A very common one, played by mother partridges as well as rabbits,” he was assured. “It was done just to draw you away from that clump of grass, out of which the bunny jumped in the start. If you’d gone there you’d have found a nest of young rabbits too small to escape. The mother was ready to risk her own life in order to save her babies.”
Perk was deeply impressed.
“Why, I wouldn’t have hurt one of them for anything,” he insisted; “but then the old lady couldn’t know that, could she? To think of such devotion even in an humble bunny! Why, it would shame a good many human parents, that’s right. And you say partridges do something the same, eh?”
“A common trick,” Wee Willie hastened to remark. “Many a time in the summer, or early in the fall before hunting time came, I’ve had a bird suddenly flutter out on the woods trail before me, and act as if she had a broken wing. I used to chase after her at first, until I got wise to her sly trick. She’d let me almost grab her, and then just flip on a little further, all the while luring me ahead; then all of a sudden she’d recover the use of that broken wing and go off with a buzz.”