for Master Wasp the terrier made a snap at it just as he was going,
and cleaned all the hair off of it, so that it was bare as a rat's
tail.

Poor Featherhead limped off, bruised and beaten and bedraggled, with
the boys and dog still after him; and they would have caught him,
after all, if Tip Chipmunk's hole had not stood hospitably open to
receive him. Tip took him in, like a good-natured fellow as he was,
and took the best of care of him; but the glory of Featherhead's tail
had departed for ever. He had sprained his left paw, and got a
chronic rheumatism, and the fright and fatigue which he had gone
through had broken up his constitution, so that he never again could
be what he had been; but, Tip gave him a situation as under-clerk in
his establishment, and from that time he was a sadder and a wiser
squirrel than he ever had been before.



THE HISTORY OF TIP-TOP



Under the window of a certain pretty little cottage there grew a
great old apple-tree, which in the spring had thousands and thousands
of lovely pink blossoms on it, and in the autumn had about half as
many bright red apples as it had blossoms in the spring.

The nursery of this cottage was a little bower of a room, papered
with mossy-green paper, and curtained with white muslin; and here
five little children used to come, in their white nightgowns, to be