It was too late to get himself anything elaborate; he found some leftovers
in the refrigerator and combined them into a stew. While it was heating,
he sat down at the kitchen table and lit his pipe. The spurt of flame from
the lighter opened Little Fuzzy's eyes, but what really awed him was Pappy
Jack blowing smoke. He sat watching this phenomenon, until, a few minutes
later, the stew was hot and the pipe was laid aside; then Little Fuzzy
went back to nibbling Extee Three.
Suddenly he gave a yeek of petulance and scampered into the living room.
In a moment, he was back with something elongated and metallic which he
laid on the floor beside him.
"What have you got there, Little Fuzzy? Let Pappy Jack see?"
Then he recognized it as his own one-inch wood chisel. He remembered
leaving it in the outside shed after doing some work about a week ago, and
not being able to find it when he had gone to look for it. That had
worried him; people who got absent-minded about equipment didn't last long
in the wilderness. After he finished eating and took the dishes to the
sink, he went over and squatted beside his new friend.
"Let Pappy Jack look at it, Little Fuzzy," he said. "Oh, I'm not going to
take it away from you. I just want to see it."
The edge was dulled and nicked; it had been used for a lot of things wood
chisels oughtn't to be used for. Digging, and prying, and most likely, it
had been used as a weapon. It was a handy-sized, all-purpose tool for a
Little Fuzzy. He laid it on the floor where he had gotten it and started
washing the dishes.
Little Fuzzy watched him with interest for a while, and then he began
investigating the kitchen. Some of the things he wanted to investigate had
to be taken away from him; at first that angered him, but he soon learned
that there were things he wasn't supposed to have. Eventually, the dishes
got washed.
There were more things to investigate in the living room. One of them was
the wastebasket. He found that it could be dumped, and promptly dumped it,
pulling out everything that hadn't fallen out. He bit a corner off a sheet
of paper, chewed on it and spat it out in disgust. Then he found that
crumpled paper could be flattened out and so he flattened a few sheets,
and then discovered that it could also be folded. Then he got himself
gleefully tangled in a snarl of wornout recording tape. Finally he lost
interest and started away. Jack caught him and brought him back.
"No, Little Fuzzy," he said. "You do not dump wastebaskets and then walk
away from them. You put things back in." He touched the container and
said, slowly and distinctly, "Waste ... basket." Then he righted it, doing
it as Little Fuzzy would have to, and picked up a piece of paper, tossing
it in from Little Fuzzy's shoulder height. Then he handed Little Fuzzy a
wad of paper and repeated, "Waste ... basket."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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