Now that the great fight was over, and he knew that the big stranger
was hurrying back to the Great Mountain, all Lightfoot's anger melted
away. In its place was a great longing to find Miss Daintyfoot. His
great eyes became once more soft and beautiful. In them was a look of
wistfulness. Lightfoot walked down to the edge of the water and drank,
for he was very, very thirsty. Then he turned, intending to take up once
more his search for beautiful Miss Daintyfoot.
When he turned he faced the thicket in which Miss Daintyfoot was hiding.
His keen eyes caught a little movement of the branches. A beautiful head
was slowly thrust out, and Lightfoot gazed again into a pair of soft
eyes which he was sure were the most beautiful eyes in all the Great
World. He wondered if she would disappear and run away as she had the
last time he saw her.
He took a step or two forward. The beautiful head was withdrawn.
Lightfoot's heart sank. Then he bounded forward into that thicket. He
more than half expected to find no one there, but when he entered that
thicket he received the most wonderful surprise in all his life. There
stood Miss Daintyfoot, timid, bashful, but with a look in her eyes which
Lightfoot could not mistake. In that instant Lightfoot understood the
meaning of that longing which had kept him hunting for her and of the
rage which had filled him when he had discovered the presence of the big
stranger from the Great Mountain. It was love. Lightfoot knew that he
loved Miss Daintyfoot and, looking into her soft, gentle eyes, he knew
that Miss Daintyfoot loved him.
CHAPTER XL
HAPPY DAYS IN THE GREEN FOREST
These were happy days in the Green Forest. At least, they were happy for
Lightfoot the Deer. They were the happiest days he had ever known. You
see, he had won beautiful, slender, young Miss Daintyfoot, and now she
was no longer Miss Daintyfoot but Mrs. Lightfoot. Lightfoot was sure
that there was no one anywhere so beautiful as she, and Mrs. Lightfoot
knew that there was no one so handsome and brave as he.
Wherever Lightfoot went, Mrs. Lightfoot went. He showed her all his
favorite hiding-places. He led her to his favorite eating-places. She
did not tell him that she was already acquainted with every one of them,
that she knew the Green Forest quite as well as he did. If he had
stopped to think how day after day she had managed to keep out of his
sight while he hunted for her, he would have realized that there was
little he could show her which she did not already know. But he didn't
stop to think and proudly led her from place to place. And Mrs.
Lightfoot wisely expressed delight with all she saw quite as if it were
all new.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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