While Violet stood wondering thus, she saw a squirrel on the fence, nibbling upon a nut. As soon as she stirred, he darted along a rail or two, and then, waiting till she came up with him, went nibbling again.

"You needn't feel so grand with your spry legs. I guess I can run as well as you," said Violet.

The squirrel tucked the nut under one arm, and with a whisk of his bushy tail, darted like lightning along the rails, leaving Violet so far behind she thought he had gone into the wood; but when she had reached far enough herself, there he sat, quietly nibbling at his nut again, and soon as he saw her, whisked up into a tree, and from among the high boughs called, "Cheep, cheep, chip! Which beat, little girl?"

Violet could not see him, he went so fast and far; and as she looked up among the leafy boughs, he dropped the nut right into her face, and ran round and round the limb, and called "Cheep, cheep, chip!" again, as if he were laughing at her.

Violet laughed too, and threw the nut back at him, looking first to see how clean he had eaten out the meat.

Away darted squirrel, without waiting to chip this time, and Violet called, as he ran,—

"It's all very fine to whisk along so fast, mister; but I should like to know how much good your travelling does. I know you can't see a thing, any more than they can in the rail cars I've heard about. You're welcome to your legs so long as you leave the brook, and the flowers, and birds for puss and me."

But he only answered by dropping another nut from directly over her head, and she followed him into the wood—the beautiful, cool, still wood. Violet left off singing as she entered it; for she loved to hear the rustle of the ripe leaves, and to watch the tiny fibres falling lightly from the pines, and hear the nuts and acorns rattle down, and to see the spider webs and insects glitter wherever a gleam of sunshine had stolen through the boughs.

Her hands were full of flowers, which she had gathered on the way; for she did not mean her new cup should be empty when the good parents came home.

So she had picked such a splendid bunch!—bright red cardinal flowers from the swamp; and along by the brook side, where it was sunniest, she found beautiful blue fringed gentians; and farther on branches of golden rod, that looked like little elm trees changed to gold; and on farther still, by the edge of the wood, where, as they waved, they seemed beckoning her, she found plenty of asters, white as snow, with little yellow eyes twinkling out among the petals, or else rich purple with deep gold inside; and she had some of the everlasting flowers too, like bunches of pure pearls.

Violet crept under the deep shade of the boughs, where the brook was gurgling over its mossy stones, and laid the stems of her flowers there to keep them fresh, making a wall of pebbles around them, so that the water, which tripped along so fast, should not carry them away.

For once, when she forgot to do this, she had no sooner placed her flowers in the brook than off they sailed down stream, and scattered so fast and far she couldn't think of finding them all again.

Violet laughed when she remembered that day, and how the brook, full of its mischief, had run away with her treasures, and scattered them any and every where along its banks, setting some upright, as if they were growing again, and wedging some under the stones, and tangling some under the fence, and floating some down the hill and through the sunny field, so fast they seemed chasing the little fish that made their home in the brook.

Even away down by Reuben's house a few had strayed, and reached home so much before Violet that she began to think the waves had, after all, as spry feet as her own.