"You don"t mean you"re sorry, do you?" Mrs. Robin asked him.
"Certainly I am!" Sandy told her. "I was just counting your eggs. And when you startled me, I dropped that one. I thought it must be a hawk, you all made such a noise."
"You"re sure you weren"t going to eat our eggs?" Mr. Robin inquired.
"Eat them!" Sandy exclaimed. "Why, my mother has often told me not to eat birds" eggs."
When he heard that, Mr. Robin whispered something to his wife. And then he said to Sandy Chipmunk:
"You go home! And don"t let me catch you around this tree again!"
Sandy was glad to escape so easily as that. And though he was sorry to have missed a good meal, there was one thing that made him almost happy: He didn"t have to bother to wipe his mouth before he let his mother see him.
IV
BUILDING A HOUSE
There came a day when Sandy Chipmunk decided that he was old enough and big enough to make a house of his own. He was not the sort of person to think and think about a thing and put off the doing of it from one day to another. So the moment the idea of a house popped into his head Sandy Chipmunk began hunting for a good place to dig.
It was not long before he found a bit of ground that seemed to him the very best spot for a home that any one could want.
The place where he intended to make his front door was in the middle of a smooth plot among some beech trees. Farmer Green"s cows had clipped the gra.s.s short all around. And Sandy knew that he could have a neat dooryard without being obliged to go to the trouble of cutting the gra.s.s himself.
But what he liked most of all about the place was that as he stood there he could look all around in every direction. That was just what he wanted, because whenever he wished to leave his new house he would be able to peep out and see whether anybody was waiting to catch him.
So Sandy Chipmunk took off his little, short coat, folded it carefully, and laid it down upon the gra.s.s. Then he pulled off his necktie and unb.u.t.toned his collar. Just because he was going to dig in the ground there was no reason why he should get his clothes dirty.
After that Sandy Chipmunk set to work. And you should have seen how he made the earth fly. When night came and he had to stop working there was a big heap of dirt beneath the beech trees, to show how busy Sandy had been. There was a big hole in the pasture, too. But it was nothing at all, compared with the hole Sandy had dug by the time he had finished his house.
Every morning Sandy Chipmunk came back to the grove of beech trees to work upon his new house. And it was not many days before his burrow was so deep that when winter came the ground about his chamber would not freeze. It was what Farmer Green would have called "below frost-line."
You must not think it was an easy matter for Sandy Chipmunk to dig a home. You must remember that somehow he had to bring the dirt out of his tunnel to the top of the ground. And he did that by _pushing it ahead of him with his nose_.
You may laugh when you hear that. But for Sandy Chipmunk it was no laughing matter. If _he_ had laughed, just as likely as not he would have found his mouth full of dirt. And you can understand that that wouldn"t have been very pleasant.
As it was, his face was very dirty. But he never went back to his mother"s house until he had washed it carefully, just as a cat washes her face.
Sometimes Sandy found stones in his way, down there beneath the pasture.
And those he had to push up, too. Sometimes a stone was too big to crowd through the opening into the world outside. And then Sandy had to make the opening bigger. After he had done that, and pushed the stone out upon his dirt-pile, he would make his doorway smaller again by packing earth firmly into it.
You must not suppose that when Sandy brought the loose dirt and stones up through his doorway he left them there. Not at all! He pushed all the litter some distance away. And whenever he turned, to scamper down into his burrow again, he would kick behind him, as hard as he could, to scatter the dirt still further from his new house.
After Sandy had made himself a chamber where he could sleep, and where he could store enough food to last him throughout the winter, any one would naturally imagine that his house was finished. But Sandy Chipmunk was not yet satisfied with his new home. There was still something else that he wanted to do to it.
V
MRS. CHIPMUNK IS GLAD
After Sandy Chipmunk had dug his chamber underneath Farmer Green"s pasture, he liked the _inside_ of his house quite well. But the looks of the _outside_ did not please him at all. He wanted a neat dooryard. And how could he have that, with that yawning hole through which he had pushed earth and stones, which still littered the gra.s.s a little distance away?
Luckily, Sandy knew exactly what to do. So he set to work to close the big work-hole. It was no easy task--as you can believe. But at last he managed to pack the hole full of dirt.
Then he had no door at all. And there he was in the dark, inside the hall that led to his chamber and storeroom. But that did not worry Sandy.
You see, he knew just what he was about. And before long he had dug a new doorway--a small, neat, round hole, which you would probably have walked right past, without noticing it, it was so hard to see in the gra.s.s that grew thickly about it.
You might think that at last Sandy"s house was finished. But he was not satisfied with it until he had made still another doorway, in the same fashion. He knew that it was safer to have an extra door through which he could slip out when some enemy was entering by the other one. Then Sandy Chipmunk"s house was finished. And he was greatly pleased with it.
But his work was not yet done. He had to furnish his chamber. So he began to hunt about for dry leaves, to make him a bed. These he stuffed into his cheek-pouches and carried into his house. But he didn"t march proudly up to one of his two doors. Oh, no! He reached it by careful leaps and bounds. And when he left home again he was particular to go in the same manner in which he had come.
It made no difference which of his doors Sandy used. He always came and went like that, because he didn"t want to wear a path to either of his two doors or tramp down the gra.s.s around them. If he had been so careless as to let people notice where he lived he would have been almost sure to have enemies prowling about his house. And if a weasel had happened to see one of Sandy"s neat doorways he would have pushed right in, in the hope of finding Sandy inside his house.
In that case the weasel would probably have pushed out again, with Sandy inside _him_. So you can understand that Sandy Chipmunk had the best of reasons for being careful.
After he had made a soft, warm bed for himself, Sandy set to work to gather nuts and grain, to store in his house and eat during the winter.
He was particular to choose only well cured (or dried) food, for he knew that that was the only sort that would keep through the long winter, down in his underground storeroom.
He gathered other food, too, besides nuts and grain. Near Farmer Green"s house he found some plump sunflower seeds, which he added to his store.
Then there were wild-cherry pits, too, which the birds had dropped upon the ground. All these, and many other kinds of food, found their way into Sandy Chipmunk"s home.
Much as he liked such things to eat--and especially sunflower seeds--he never ate a single nut or grain or seed while he gathered them for his winter"s food. And when you stop to remember that he had to carry everything home in his _mouth_, you can see that Sandy Chipmunk had what is called self-control.
His mother had always told him that he couldn"t get through a winter without that. And so, when Sandy brought her to see his new home, after it was all finished, and his bed was neatly made, and his storeroom full of food, Mrs. Chipmunk was delighted.
"I"m glad to see--" she said--"I"m glad to see that all my talking has done some good."
VI
SAMPLES OF WHEAT
There was so much said about Sandy Chipmunk"s store of nuts and grain that a few of the forest-people began to wish they had some of Sandy"s winter food for themselves. Uncle Sammy c.o.o.n, an old scamp who lived over near the swamp, was one of those who began to plan to get Sandy"s h.o.a.rd away from him.
It was the grain that Uncle Sammy wanted. If he had spent in honest work one-half the time he used in planning some trickery he would have been much better off. But he hated work more than anything else in the world.
Uncle Sammy c.o.o.n scarcely slept at all for several days, he was so busy thinking about Sandy"s grain. And since he always pa.s.sed his nights in wandering through the woods, he became almost ill.
The trouble was, Uncle Sammy was far too big to crawl inside Sandy"s house. And he knew that the only way he could get at the grain was to persuade somebody to bring it outside for him.