pleasantly, and accepted poor old Mrs. Nutcracker's awkward apologies
with the best possible grace; and young Tip looked in on Christmas
morning with the compliments of the season and a few beech-nuts,
which he had secured as a great dainty. The fact was, that Tip's
little striped fur coat was so filled up and overflowing with
cheerful good-will to all, that he never could be made to understand
that any of his relations could want to cut him; and therefore
Featherhead looked down on him with contempt, and said he had no
tact, and couldn't see when he was not wanted.

It was wonderful to see how, by means of persisting in remarks like
these, young Featherhead at last got all his family to look up to him
as something uncommon. Though he added nothing to the family, and
required more to be done for him than all the others put together,--
though he showed not the smallest real perseverance or ability in
anything useful,--yet somehow all his brothers and sisters, and his
poor foolish old mother, got into a way of regarding him as something
wonderful, and delighting in his sharp sayings as if they had been
the wisest things in the world.

But at last old papa declared that it was time for Featherhead to
settle himself to some business in life, roundly declaring that he
could not always have him as a hanger-on in the paternal hole.

"What are you going to do, my boy?" said Tip Chipmunk to him one day.
"We are driving now a thriving trade in hickory-nuts, and if you
would like to join us--"

"Thank you," said Featherhead; "but I confess I have no fancy for
anything so slow as the hickory trade; I never was made to grub and