As if in reply, he heard the sharp voice of Chatterer the Red Squirrel. It rang out clear and loud on the frosty air, and it was very plain that, whatever troubles others might have, Chatterer was very well satisfied with the world in general and himself in particular. Just now he was racing along the fence, stopping at every post to sit up and tell all the world that he was there and didn’t care who knew it. Presently his sharp eyes spied Tommy.
Chatterer stopped short in the middle of a rail and looked at Tommy very hard. Then he barked at him, jerking his tail with every syllable. Tommy didn’t move.
Chatterer jumped down from the fence and came nearer. Every foot or so he paused and barked, and his bark was such a funny mixture of nervousness and excitement and curiosity and sauciness, not to say impudence, that finally Tommy laughed right out. He just couldn’t help it.
Back to the fence rushed Chatterer, and scampered up to the top of a post. Once sure of the safety of this retreat, he faced Tommy and began to scold as fast as his tongue could go. Of course Tommy couldn’t understand what Chatterer was saying, but he could guess. He was telling Tommy just what he thought of a boy who would sit moping on such a beautiful day, and only two days before Christmas at that!
My, how his tongue did fly! When he had had his say to the full, he gave a final whisk of his tail and scampered off in the direction of the Old Orchard. And, as he went, it seemed to Tommy as if he looked back with the sauciest kind of a twinkle in his eyes, as much as to say, “You deserve all I’ve said, but I don’t really mean it!”
Tommy watched him, a lively little red spot against the white background, and, as he watched, the smile gradually faded away. It never would do at all to go home in good spirits after raising such a fuss as he had when he started out. So, to make himself feel as badly as he felt that he ought to feel, Tommy sighed dolefully.
“Oh, but you’re lucky!” said he, as Chatterer’s sharp voice floated over to him from the Old Orchard. “You don’t have to do a blessed thing unless you want to! All you have to do is to eat and sleep and have a good time. It must be fun. I wish I were a squirrel!”
Right then something happened. It happened all in a flash, just as it had happened to Tommy before. One minute he was a boy, a discontented boy, sitting on a big gray stone on the edge of the Green Meadows, and the next minute he wasn’t a boy at all! You see, when he made that wish, he had quite forgotten that he was sitting on the wishing-stone. Now he no longer had to guess at what Chatterer was saying. Not a bit of it. He knew.
He talked the same language himself. In short, he was a red squirrel, and in two minutes had forgotten that he ever had been a boy.
How good it felt to be free and know that he could do just as he pleased! His first impulse was to race over to the Old Orchard and make the acquaintance of Chatterer. Then he thought better of it. Something inside him seemed to tell him that he had no business there—that the Old Orchard was not big enough for two red squirrels, and that, as Chatterer had gone there first, it really belonged to him in a way.