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-_mend_ous 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."

"Would he run at you or Bill that way?" demanded the Babe in a voice of
awe at the very thought of such temerity.

"Oh, he has seen lots of _men_," replied Uncle Andy. "We're nothing new
to him. But most likely he had never seen a small boy before, and he did
not know what kind of an animal it was. The very fact th