Meanwhile, the
calf would look with wonder in her big, velvet-soft eyes, with probably
no slightest notion in her silly head as to what was making her new
mother so excited."
"How inconvenient that they couldn't talk," exclaimed the Child, who
had great faith in the virtue of explanations.
Uncle Andy rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"I suppose," he said, after a pause, "that the wild creatures _do_ talk
among themselves, more or less and after a fashion. But, you see, such
simple speech as the calf possessed was only what she had inherited,
and that, of course, was cow language and naturally unintelligible to a
moose. However, babies learn easily, and it was not long before she
and her new mother understood each other pretty well on most points of
importance.
"There were wildcats and foxes and a pair of big, tuft-eared, wild-eyed
lynxes living about the lake, and these all came creeping up one after
another, under the cover of the thickets, to stare in amazement at the
alien little one so tenderly mothered by the great cow moose. They had
seen calves, on the farms of the settlement, and they regarded this one
not only with the greed of the hungry prowler, but with a particularly
cruel hostility as one of the retainers of feared and hated Man.
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