Mother Reindeer looked at him for a moment without speaking, and went on grinding the wad of food in her mouth—chew, chew, chew. Then she turned her head this way and that, as if listening for any sound that might be heard.
“I’m beginning to think the whole world is made of fog,” complained White Sox. “We’ve been wandering about in it for two days—here and there, up and down—without so much as scenting another reindeer or hearing a sound. Mother, I’m getting dreadfully worried.”
Mother Reindeer looked at him again. Her kind eyes were full of patience. She did not seem a bit worried about things like fog or being lost.
White Sox thought they had gone straying in search of better moss fields and had become separated from the herd by the heavy mist. He never dreamed that his mother was taking him to school. No, indeed!
“Mother,” he said, speaking a little louder, “what if we have been going farther away all the time and never find our way back to the big herd on the sea beach?”
Mother Reindeer swallowed her cud. “Nonsense!” she answered. “When the fog lifts we shall be able to see where we are. We have better moss here than down on the sea beach, and no mosquitoes to bother us. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“But, mother! it is very lonesome here. There isn’t a fox or a ptarmigan, not even an owl or a mouse,” White Sox complained.
Then he rose and stretched himself. He was five months old, and he had never been away from the sea beach before. He tried to look through the fog—this way and that way—but he was afraid of losing sight of his mother. He did not go more than a couple of yards from her.
“This awful stillness makes me unhappy,” he said. “I want to hear the sound of the cowbells, the yelps of the collies, and the shouts of the herders.”
Mother Reindeer watched him with kindly eyes. She was very proud of White Sox. He was her fifteenth fawn, and the smartest, handsomest, and most graceful and agile in the big herd.