Then, all at once, the calf forgot her fears. She was
so lonely, you know, and the stranger did not look at all like a bear.
So, with a little appealing _Bah_, she ran forward clumsily, straight
up to the tall stranger's side, paused a moment at the alien smell, and
then, with a cool impudence only possible at the age of twenty-five
hours, began to help herself to a dinner of fresh milk. The tall
stranger turned her great dark head far around, sniffed doubtfully for
a few seconds, and fell to licking the presumptuous one's back
assiduously."
"I know," said the Child proudly. "It was a moose."
"I'd have been ashamed of you," said Uncle Andy, "if you hadn't known
that at once from my description. Of course, it was a cow moose. But
where the calf's great piece of luck came in was in the fact that the
moose had lost her calf, just the day before, through its falling into
the river and being swept away by the rapids. Her heart, heavy with
grief and loneliness, her udder aching with the pressure of its milk,
she had been drawn up to see what manner of baby it was that dared to
cry its misery so openly here in the dangerous forest.
"And when the calf adopted her so confidently, after a brief
shyness--the shyness of all wild things toward the creatures who have
come under man's care--she returned the compliment of adopting the calf.
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