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Tale of Frisky Squirrel

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<h2>XIX</h2><h3>Frisky’s Prison</h3></div> <p>Frisky Squirrel simply couldn’t keep away from the field where the wheat was being threshed. He was on hand before the men came in the morning, and he was the last to leave the place at night. He ate all his meals right on the spot, and went home only to sleep.</p> <p>Now, it was not long before Johnnie Green spied Frisky Squirrel loitering about the field. And he made up his mind that that young squirrel was altogether too bold. So Johnnie Green rigged up a trap, which he made from an old box, a few sticks, and a bit of string. And one noon,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name='Page_92' id='Page_92'>[Pg 92]</SPAN></span> while the men were eating their lunch under some trees a little way from the threshing-machine, Frisky Squirrel was just reckless enough to steal up and try to get his luncheon too, by eating some of the wheat-kernels. He noticed a tempting little heap of kernels, right beside a little box. And he had just stopped to eat them when all at once the box toppled over on him, and there he was—caught!</p> <p>When Johnnie Green discovered that he had captured that young squirrel he was just as glad as Frisky was sorry and frightened. That, you see, is just the difference between <i>catching</i> and <i>being caught</i>. It makes a great difference whether you are outside the trap, or in it. And Frisky Squirrel was in it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get away.</p> <p>He made up his mind that if anybody<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name='Page_93' id='Page_93'>[Pg 93]</SPAN></span> tried to lift him out of the box he would bite him. But Johnnie Green had caught squirrels before. He pulled on a pair of heavy gloves, and all Frisky’s biting did no good—or harm—at all.</p> <p>When Johnnie reached home he put his prize into a neat little wire cage. As soon as Frisky found himself inside it he looked all around, to see if there wasn’t some opening big enough to squeeze through. And sure enough! there was a little door. And in a twinkling Frisky had popped himself through it and had started to run.</p> <p>He ran and ran. But strange to say, all his running took him nowhere at all. At first he couldn’t discover what was the matter. But after a while he saw that he was inside a broad wheel, made of wire. And when he ran the wheel simply spun ’round and ’round.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name='Page_94' id='Page_94'>[Pg 94]</SPAN></span></p> <p>He stopped running then. For he thought of the horses that made the horse-power go. He was in just the same fix that they were in. He could run as fast as he pleased, but he would still stay right there inside the wheel.</p> <p>Poor Frisky Squirrel crept back into his cage. He remembered what his mother had said, when he wished he could be a horse, and make the tread-mill go. “You’d soon grow tired of it,” she had told him.</p> <p>At the time, Frisky hadn’t believed her. But now he knew that his mother was wiser than he was. And he wondered if he was ever going to see her again.</p> <div class='figcenter' style='width: 300px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'> <SPAN name='illus-036' id='illus-036'></SPAN> <ANTIMG src='images/illus-071.png' alt='300' title='' /><br/></div> <hr class='major' /> <div class='figcenter' style='width: 300px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'> <SPAN name='illus-037' id='illus-037'></SPAN> <ANTIMG src='images/illus-073.png' alt='300' title='' /><br/></div> <div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'> <SPAN name='XX' id='XX'></SPAN> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name='Page_95' id='Page_95'>[Pg 95]</SPAN></span> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />

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