The suspicious eyes will be all around you. Perhaps it may be a
tiny wood-mouse peering from under a root two or three steps behind
you. You have been perfectly still, say, for ten minutes, and the
mouse is just beginning to think that you may be something quite
harmless. She rubs her whiskers, and is just about to come out when,
as likely as not, you move your fingers a little, behind your
back"--here the Child blushed guiltily, and thrust both his grimy
little fists well to the front--"feeling quite safe because you don't
see the movement yourself.
"Well, the mouse sees it. She realizes at once that you aren't dead,
after all--in fact, that you're a dangerous deceiver. She wisks
indignantly back into her hole. Somebody else sees her alarm, and
follows her example, and in two seconds it's gone all about the place
that you're not a stump or a stone or a harmless dead thing waiting to
be nibbled at, but a terrible enemy lying in wait for them all. So you
see how important it is to keep still, with the real stillness of dead
things."
The Child winked his eyes rapidly. "But I can't keep from _winking_,
Uncle Andy," he protested. "I'll promise not to wiggle my fingers or
wrinkle my nose.
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