"
The Babe shuddered, but heroically refrained from interrupting.
"Of course the stump soon healed up," continued Uncle Andy, "but she
always found the absence of that paw most inconvenient, especially when
she was digging burrows. She used to find herself digging them on the
bias, and coming out where she did not at all expect to.
"But to return to Young Grumpy. While he was yet very young his
three-legged mother, who had seen him and his brothers and sisters eating
grass quite comfortably, decided that they were big enough to look out
for themselves. She refused to nurse them any more. Then she turned
them all out of the burrow. When they came presently scurrying back
again, hoping it was all an unhappy joke, she nipped them most
unfeelingly. Their father snored. There was no help in that quarter.
They scurried dejectedly forth again.
"Outside, in the short pasture grass and scattered ox-eye daisies, they
looked at each other suspiciously, and each felt that somehow it was the
other fellow's fault. Aggrieved and miserable, they went rambling off,
each his own way, to face alone what Fate might have in store for him.
And Young Grumpy, looking up from a melancholy but consoling feast which
he was making on a mushroom, found himself alone in the world.
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