But Tommy wasn't anything of the kind. "Dee, dee, dee! Come on!" he cried, and flitted over and helped himself to a cracked nut and was back with it before Happy Jack could make up his mind to jump down inside. Of course now that he had dared Tommy Tit, and Tommy had taken the dare, he just had to do it too. It looked a long way in to where Farmer Brown's boy was standing. Twice he started and turned back. Then he heard Tommy Tit chuckle. That was too much. He wouldn't be laughed at. He just wouldn't. He scampered across, grabbed a nut, and rushed back to the window-sill, where he ate the nut. It was easier to go after the second nut, and when he went for the third, he had made up his mind that it was perfectly safe in there, and so he sat up on a chair and ate it. Presently he felt quite at home, and when he had eaten all the nuts he wanted, he ran all around the room, examining all the strange things there.
This was a little more than Tommy Tit could make up his mind to do. He wasn't afraid to fly in for a nut and then fly out again, but he couldn't feel easy inside a house like that. Of course, this made Happy Jack feel good all over. You see, he felt that now he really did have something to boast about. No one else in all the Green Forest or on the Green Meadows could say that they had been all over Farmer Brown's boy's room as he had. Happy Jack swelled himself out at the thought. Now everybody would say, "What a bold fellow!"
CHAPTER XXIII
SAMMY JAY IS QUITE UPSET
I know of nothing sweeter than
Success to Squirrel or to man.
Happy Jack.
Very few people can be all puffed up with pride without showing it. Happy Jack Squirrel couldn't. Just to have looked at him you would have known that he was feeling very, very good about something. When he thought no one was looking, he would actually strut. And it was all because he considered himself a very bold fellow. That was a new feeling for Happy Jack. He knew that all his neighbors considered him rather timid, and many a time he had envied, actually envied Jimmy Skunk and Reddy Fox and Unc' Billy Possum and even Sammy Jay because they did such bold things and had dared to visit Farmer Brown's dooryard and henhouse in spite of Bowser the Hound.
But now he felt that he dared do a thing that not one of them dared do. He dared go right into Farmer Brown's house and make himself quite at home in the room of Farmer Brown's boy. He felt that he was a tremendously brave fellow. You see, he quite forgot one thing. He forgot that he had found out that love destroys fear, and that though it might look to others like a very bold thing to walk right into Farmer Brown's house, it really wasn't bold at all, because all the time he knew that no harm would come to him. It is never brave to do a thing that you are not afraid to do. It had been brave of him to go in at that open window the first time, because then he had been afraid, but now he wasn't afraid, and so it was no longer either brave or bold of him.
Tommy Tit the Chickadee knew all this, and he used to chuckle to himself as he saw how proud of himself Happy Jack was, but he said nothing to any one about it. Of course, it wasn't long before others began to notice Happy Jack's pride. One of the first was Sammy Jay. There is very little that escapes Sammy Jay's sharp eyes. Silently stealing through the Green Forest early one morning, he surprised Happy Jack strutting.