The Children of Elfland; New Fairy Tales (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos or missing text. Not indexed. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 18 . Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... The Little &reu Squirrels. NCE upon a time, in a large old wood, full of great trees, there lived a number of grey squirrels; and very happy little squirrels they were. They had each a nice little nest, and in the bright summer days they used to crowd all together on the boughs, and pelt each other with nuts and swing backwards and forwards, as merry as you please. Then when the days began to get short, they worked as hard as ever they could, carrying nuts, which they held tight in their little paws, and put into deep holes in the trunks of the trees. They were kind little squirrels too, for when old Grey-tail got too old to get nuts for himself, and would have had nothing to eat all the dark cold winter, the other squirrels filled his hole before they put a single nut into their own. And when poor little Fine-ear had her leg broken by a bough falling on it, they made her a nice little bed of leaves at the foot of a tree, and used to come every day to feed her. One day a little squirrel was picking the inside out of a nut and swinging all the while on a bough, when he saw two men walking through the wood. Each of these two men carried an axe on his shoulder and a rope in his hand. Whenever they came to a very fine tree, they stopped to measure it round with the rope and cut something on it with the axe. Then they walked on to the next tree. In this way they marked all the large trees in the wood, and then went away. The squirrel, whose name was Jumper, ran down to the ground, as soon as they were gone, and told all the other squirrels what the men had been doing. They were very much puzzled, until one of them said, 'Let us ask old Grey-tail what it all means.' Grey-tail was the old squirrel to whom the others had been so kind. When he heard about the men m...