And it is not the partridges alone with whom we grow acquainted. We have glimpses, too, of the other outdoor creatures. The life of the woods slips away from us as we pass, but only just out of sight, and not always that. The blue jays scream in the tree-tops, officiously proclaiming us to the woods; the chickadees, who _must_ see all that goes on, hop close beside us in the bushes; the gray squirrel dodges behind a tree trunk with just the corner of an eye peering at us around it. The chipmunk darts into the stone wall, and doubtless looks at us from its safe depths; the rabbit gallops off from the brier tangle or the brush heap, or sits up, round-eyed, thinking, little silly, that we don't see him. Once I saw a beautiful red fox who leaped into the open for a moment, stood poised, and leaped on into the brush; and once, as I sat resting, a woodchuck, big and uncombed, hustled busily past me, so close I could have touched him. He did not see me, and seemed so preoccupied with some pressing business that I should hardly have been surprised to see him pull a watch out of his pocket, like Alice's rabbit, and mutter, "I shall be late." I had not known that the wood creatures ever felt hurried except when pursued. Another time I was working up the slope on the sunny edge of a run, and, as I drew myself up over the edge of a big rock, I found myself face to face--nose to nose--with a calm, mild-eyed, cottontail rabbit. He did not remain calm; in fact, we were both startled, but he recovered first, and hopped softly over the side of the rock, and went galloping away through the brushy bottom, while I, still kneeling, watched him disappear just as Jonathan came up. "What's the joke?" "Nothing, only I just met a rabbit. He sat here, right here, and he was so rabbit-y! He looked at me just like an Easter card." "Why didn't you shoot him?" "I never thought of it. I wish you had seen how his nose twiddled! And, anyhow, I wouldn't shoot anything sitting up that way, like a tame kitten." "Then why didn't you shoot when he ran?" "Shoot a rabbit running! Running in scallops! I couldn't." The fact is, I shouldn't shoot a rabbit anyway, unless driven by hunger. I am not humane, but merely sentimental about them because they are soft and pretty. Once, indeed, when I found all my beautiful heads of lettuce neatly nibbled off down to the central stalks, I almost hardened my heart against them, but the next time I met one of the little fellows I forgave him all.