The Tale of Frisky Squirrel | Page 9

Jimmy Rabbit says long tails are out of fashion," said Frisky.
"Out of fashion indeed!" Mrs. Squirrel sniffed. "He's jealous--that's
what's the trouble with him. He wishes he had a fine, long, bushy tail
himself. Goodness me! I'm all of a flutter--I'm so upset." And poor Mrs.
Squirrel sat right down and fanned herself with her sun-bonnet. "Now,
don't you ever let anybody try to cut off your tail again," she said to
Frisky. "You have your father's tail. And everybody always said that he
had the most beautiful tail that was ever seen in these woods."
Frisky didn't quite understand what his mother meant. If he had his
father's tail, then where was his? And if it was his, then where was his
father's? All the way home he kept asking himself questions like those.
But whatever the answers might be, Frisky was glad that he still bore
that beautiful brush. He began to see that he would have looked very
queer, with just a short stub like Jimmy Rabbit's.

XII
Frisky Visits the Gristmill
Frisky Squirrel was very fond of wheat-kernels. Somehow or other he
heard that there was a place on Swift River called the gristmill, where
there was almost all the wheat in the world--at least that is what Frisky
heard. So he started out, one day, to find the gristmill. He thought he
could have a very pleasant time there.
Frisky had no trouble at all in finding the gristmill. It was just below
the mill-dam. And everybody knew where that was.
The gristmill was an old stone building with a red roof. And once
inside it Frisky saw great heaps of wheat-kernels everywhere. And
there were sacks and sacks too--some of them stuffed with kernels,
which Frisky was so fond of, and some of them filled with a fine white
powder, which Frisky didn't like so well, because it got in his eyes, and
up his nose, and made him sneeze. It was the same sort of powder into
which he had fallen one time at Farmer Green's house. It was flour, of
course--you must have guessed that.
The gristmill was a quiet sort of building. There seemed to be nobody
there at all. And Frisky helped himself freely to wheat-kernels, for it
was very early in the morning and he had not had his breakfast. He was
just telling himself what a delightful place the gristmill was, and how
glad he was that he had heard about it, when suddenly there was a
terrible noise--a grinding, and whirring, and buzzing, and pounding.
The very floor trembled and shook, and Frisky expected that in another
instant the roof would come crashing down on him.
He leaped away from the bag of wheat-kernels on which he had been
breakfasting and he bounded through the great doorway and ran along
the rail-fence, far up the road, thinking that each moment would be his
last. For Frisky believed that the end of the world had come. And he
never stopped running until he was safe inside his mother's house.

Mrs. Squirrel was not at home. And it was so long before she came in
and found Frisky that he had begun to think he would never see her
again.
"Whatever is the matter?" Mrs. Squirrel asked. Frisky was making a
dreadful noise, for he was crying as if he would never stop.
"It's the end of the world!" Frisky sobbed. "I didn't think you were
coming back."
Bit by bit Mrs. Squirrel managed to learn where Frisky had been and
what had happened to him. And she smiled when she found out what
had frightened him. Since it was quite dark inside their home in the
hollow limb of the big hickory tree, Frisky could not see his mother
smiling. But her voice sounded very cheerful when she said--
"Now stop crying, my son. There's nothing to cry about. The end of the
world hasn't come. And that's something you and I don't need to worry
about, anyhow."
"What you heard was only the mill-wheels turning. You must have
reached the gristmill before the miller had come to begin his day's work.
That was why everything was so still. I don't wonder you were
frightened when all that noise began. But gristmills are always like that.
They make a terrible noise when they grind the wheat."
Frisky Squirrel stopped sobbing then. He was glad that his mother
knew exactly what had happened. But he made up his mind that
whenever he wanted any wheat-kernels to eat he would not go to the
gristmill for them. Luckily the gristmill had not quite all the wheat in
the world.

XIII
Fun on the Milldam
There was something about the dam across Swift River that Frisky

Squirrel simply couldn't keep away from--after