“‘Now,’ said he, ’you little imp of Satan, maybe you’ll not come stealing any more of my strawberries or pulling any more straw out of my poor scarecrow’s head!’

“And she never did!” concluded Uncle Andy, rising and stretching his legs.  “Those two were not reformed, you may be sure.  But they kept clear, after that, of the Boy’s strawberry patch, and of all scarecrows.  It’s time we were getting back to camp for supper, or Bill will be feeling sour.”

“But you haven’t told me,” protested the Babe, who had a most tenacious memory, “why those crows all flew away out of the pine-top so suddenly, as if they had just remembered something.  And you haven’t told me why you’d rather be a humming-bird than a crow.  And you haven’t—­”

But Uncle Andy stopped him.

“If you think I’m going to tell you all I know,” said he, “you’re mistaken.  If I did, you’d know as much as I do, and it wouldn’t be any fun.  Some day you’ll be glad I’ve left something for you to find out for yourself.”

CHAPTER III

YOUNG GRUMPY AND THE ONE-EYED GANDER

“My gracious!  What’s that?” cried the Babe, and nearly jumped out of his boots.  A gray thing had come right at him, with an ugly, scurrying rush.  The bushes and bracken being thick, he had not got a very clear view of it—­and he did not stop to try for a better one.  In two seconds he was back at Uncle Andy’s side, where the latter sat smoking on his favorite log by the water.

The Babe’s eyes were very wide.  He looked a bit startled.

“It ran straight at me!” he declared.  “What could it have been?”

“A bear, I suppose!” said Uncle Andy sarcastically.

“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-mendous 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.”