Part 5 (2/2)
”I guess that I know a cherry pit when I see one!” said the hired man
”And if those are not cherry pits, I'll fry my mittens and eat 'em for supper!”
”The trouble with you, Hank, is that you are never willing to give up when you are wrong!” said the farmer ”How could so many cherry pits be under a basswood tree?”
Just then, one of the baby robins ”popped” a pit, and the little cherry stone rattled against the branches of the basswood and fell to the ground near the hired man's feet
The farmer picked it up and said: ”Now, look here, Hank! There is no use of your standing there and telling me that that is a cherry pit, when both of us saw it drop off that basswood! Cherry pits don't drop off basswood trees, and for you to try to tell me that I don't know the difference between a cherry tree and a basswood tree is going just a little bit too far!”
”Maybe you're right!” said the hired man
”There ain't no 'ht when it co nature!”
”All except when you pulled up that poison ivy, barehanded!” said the hired hed, and the farmer said:
”Those basswood bobs did look so much like cherry pits, that they would have fooled anybody but an expert!”
And the hired man said: ”They looked so much like cherry pits that the next tiet some of them, and plant 'em in a box and raise me a cherry orchard!”
After the farone, Mister Gabriel Chipmunk came out from under his old home stuoing to have to eat next winter
So he sat on top of his old ho to put in his granary bins
Jeremiah Yellowbird sat in a bush near by, and when he saw Mister Chip so still, he said to him:
”What makes you so quiet to-day, Mister Chipmunk?”
”I am worried about what I will have to eat next winter, Mister Yellowbird! There are no beechnuts, this year, the wild-pea crop is a failure, the farrain near roundnut for six seasons!”
”Can't you find sos?” asked Mister Yellowbird
”If the country hat it used to be, I would not worry a bit But every year it gets worse and worse! Why, last winter, Mrs Chiph the winter on wild buckwheat! My grandfather would have starved rather than eat wild buckwheat! And he would have starved, all right, if he had boarded at our house last winter, for wild buckwheat was all that we had! I on wild buckwheat!”
”Are you the monarch of the woods, Mister Chipmunk?” asked Jeremiah Yellowbird
”I would like to knoho has a better right to be called the 'monarch of the woods,'” said Gabriel Chipmunk ”When I sit on my old home stu care of the woods, and if I did not keep a sharp lookout when s, and cats come around, there would be many lives lost! A monarch is supposed to take care of his realm, and then I have plenty of time to be monarch, and I like the work, so thatfell fro basswood tree It was a cherry pit which one of the baby robins had ”popped”
”Was that a nut which fell fro basswood?” asked Gabriel Chipmunk But Jeremiah Yellowbird did not know, so Mister Chipmunk hurried over to see, and when Gabriel Chipround under the big basswood, he was very much pleased, for Gabriel Chipmunk and all his folks liked cherry pits
Mister Chip pockets with the nice cherry pits, and ran for hos would carry him