Children of the Wild by Charles G. D. Roberts
page 133 of 200 (66%)
page 133 of 200 (66%)
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these. All she saw was a tall, dark, ungainly looking, long-legged
creature, half as tall again as her mother had been, with no horns, a long clumsy head, thick overhanging nose, and big splay hooves. She didn't quite know whether to be frightened at this great, dark form or not. But she stopped her noise, I can tell you. "Well, the tall stranger stood still, about thirty or forty paces away, eyeing the calf with interest and the fawn-colored heap on the ground with suspicion. 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 |
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