Queer Little Folks | Page 7

own living; we can take care of ourselves
in future, so you need have no further trouble with us."
"Madam," said the doctor, making a bow with an air which displayed
his tail-feathers to advantage, "let me congratulate you on the charming
family you have raised. A finer brood of young, healthy ducks I never
saw. Give me your claw, my dear friend," he said, addressing the eldest
son. "In our barn-yard no family is more respected than that of the
ducks."
And so Madam Feathertop came off glorious at last. And when after
this the ducks used to go swimming up and down the river like so many
nabobs among the admiring hens, Dr. Peppercorn used to look after
them and say, "Ah, I had the care of their infancy!" and Mr. Gray Cock
and his wife used to say, "It was our system of education did that!"

THE NUTCRACKERS OF NUTCRACKER LODGE

Mr. and Mrs. Nutcracker were as respectable a pair of squirrels as ever
wore gray brushes over their backs. They were animals of a settled and
serious turn of mind, not disposed to run after vanities and novelties,
but filling their station in life with prudence and sobriety. Nutcracker
Lodge was a hole in a sturdy old chestnut overhanging a shady dell,
and was held to be as respectably kept an establishment as there was in
the whole forest. Even Miss Jenny Wren, the greatest gossip of the
neighbourhood, never found anything to criticise in its arrangements;
and old Parson Too-whit, a venerable owl who inhabited a branch
somewhat more exalted, as became his profession, was in the habit of
saving himself much trouble in his parochial exhortations by telling his
parishioners in short to "look at the Nutcrackers" if they wanted to see
what it was to live a virtuous life. Everything had gone on prosperously

with them, and they had reared many successive families of young
Nutcrackers, who went forth to assume their places in the forest of life,
and to reflect credit on their bringing up,--so that naturally enough they
began to have a very easy way of considering themselves models of
wisdom.
But at last it came along, in the course of events, that they had a son
named Featherhead, who was destined to bring them a great deal of
anxiety. Nobody knows what the reason is, but the fact was, that
Master Featherhead was as different from all the former children of this
worthy couple as if he had been dropped out of the moon into their nest,
instead of coming into it in the general way. Young Featherhead was a
squirrel of good parts and a lively disposition, but he was sulky and
contrary and unreasonable, and always finding matter of complaint in
everything his respectable papa and mamma did. Instead of assisting in
the cares of a family,--picking up nuts and learning other lessons proper
to a young squirrel,--he seemed to settle himself from his earliest years
into a sort of lofty contempt for the Nutcrackers, for Nutcracker Lodge,
and for all the good old ways and institutions of the domestic hole,
which he declared to be stupid and unreasonable, and entirely behind
the times. To be sure, he was always on hand at meal-times, and played
a very lively tooth on the nuts which his mother had collected, always
selecting the very best for himself; but he seasoned his nibbling with so
much grumbling and discontent, and so many severe remarks, as to
give the impression that he considered himself a peculiarly ill-used
squirrel in having to "eat their old grub," as he very unceremoniously
called it.
Papa Nutcracker, on these occasions, was often fiercely indignant, and
poor little Mamma Nutcracker would shed tears, and beg her darling to
be a little more reasonable; but the young gentleman seemed always to
consider himself as the injured party.
Now nobody could tell why or wherefore Master Featherhead looked
upon himself as injured or aggrieved, since he was living in a good hole,
with plenty to eat, and without the least care or labour of his own; but
he seemed rather to value himself upon being gloomy and dissatisfied.
While his parents and brothers and sisters were cheerfully racing up
and down the branches, busy in their domestic toils, and laying up
stores for the winter, Featherhead sat gloomily apart, declaring himself

weary of existence, and feeling himself at liberty to quarrel with
everybody and everything about him. Nobody understood him, he
said;--he was a squirrel of a peculiar nature, and needed peculiar
treatment, and nobody treated him in a way that did not grate on the
finer nerves of his feelings. He had higher notions of existence than
could be bounded by that old rotten hole in a hollow