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Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse

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122 <h2>XXIII</h2><h3>A FEAST AT LAST</h3> To Dickie Deer Mouse, waiting impatiently for Mr. Pine Finch to drop another bud out of the tree-top, it began to seem as if his good luck were short lived. Could it be possible that Mr. Pine Finch was so careful that he lost a bud only once in a long time—perhaps only once a year? But as Dickie Deer Mouse wondered, a small shower of buds came rattling down upon the snow-crust. And Dickie Deer Mouse snatched them up, every one, and ate them hungrily. In a little while he felt so much better123 that he called out to Mr. Pine Finch: "Shake a lot of 'em down—there's a good fellow!" Mr. Pine Finch fluttered to a perch on a limb and looked down in great surprise. "Did you speak?" he inquired. "Yes!" Dickie Deer Mouse piped up. "You know, I can climb a tree; but I can't crawl out to the tips of the branches, because I'm too heavy. So you'll oblige me if you'll drop a few dozen more of those buds." The request surprised Mr. Pine Finch. His face told that much. "Buds!" he exclaimed. "Why do you want buds?" "I eat them—when I can get them," Dickie Deer Mouse informed him. The streaked gentleman in the tree looked quite blank. "What a strange thing to do!" he124 cried through his nose—or so it seemed. "Strange!" Dickie Deer Mouse echoed. "Why, you've just been eating some yourself!" And he couldn't help thinking that Mr. Pine Finch was even odder than he sounded. "That's so," Mr. Pine Finch admitted. "In fact, I may say that I'm very, very fond of tree-buds. But I'm a bird. And of course everybody knows that you're a rodent." "I'm hungry, anyway," Dickie Deer Mouse retorted. He didn't mind Mr. Finch's calling him names, if only he would drop some more buds. "You're hungry, eh?" the odd gentleman in the tree replied. "That reminds me that I'm still hungry myself. So I can't stop to talk with you any longer just now." Then he turned himself upside down,125 as he picked out a promising cluster of buds. And before he had finished his breakfast he had dropped so many buds that Dickie Deer Mouse called to him and thanked him for his kindness. "What! Are you still there?" Mr. Pine Finch exclaimed, gazing down at Dickie as if he were greatly surprised to see him lingering beneath the tree. "I must go away now," Mr. Pine Finch added. "But I'll make this remark before I leave: If you have anything more to say to me, you can find me here almost any morning soon after daybreak." And then he flew off. Dickie Deer Mouse told himself that he was in luck. By coming to that spot early every day he could pick up buds enough—dropped carelessly by Mr. Pine Finch—to feed himself until spring came and the snow melted and uncovered the126 ground, where he knew he could find food. So he went home and slept as he had not slept for weeks. And the next morning, when he went back to the tree where he had found Mr. Pine Finch, his eighteen cousins followed him. For Dickie Deer Mouse told them of his good fortune and asked them to share it with him. As for Mr. Pine Finch, he looked queerer than ever when he saw that Dickie had brought eighteen of his relations with him. However, he bade them all good morning. And he seemed to be even clumsier than he had been the day before. He dropped an enormous number of buds; so many, in fact, that Dickie Deer Mouse wondered how Mr. Pine Finch managed to get enough breakfast for himself. Perhaps that odd gentleman knew127 what he was about. To tell the truth, he had noticed the day before that Dickie Deer Mouse looked thin and hungry. His coat, too, struck Mr. Pine Finch as being somewhat shabby. But he said nothing to show Dickie Deer Mouse that he knew there was anything wrong. And if he dropped tree-buds on purpose, he never let anyone know it. Anyhow, Mr. Pine Finch did not fail to appear at that tree a single morning during the rest of the winter. Before spring came the Deer Mouse family had long since decided that he was the best friend they had in all Pleasant Valley. And they all agreed that his voice, although he did talk through his nose, was the pleasantest they had ever heard. At last the breakfast parties beneath Mr. Pine Finch's favorite tree came to an end. The snow vanished. Warm128 weather made the underground chamber in Farmer Green's pasture seem crowded and stuffy. And Dickie Deer Mouse said farewell to his eighteen cousins, because he wanted to look for a pleasant place in which to spend the summer. THE END <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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