On the same principle, and with wonderful celerity, Berry took up the idea, gracefully acknowledged her indebtedness to the original inventor, and produced a deer--a deer with wide-spreading antlers made of raisin stalks, and legs of the same material, which counterfeited nature even to the knee-joints. The neck cost some little mental exertion, but was finally triumphed over in the following shape, neatly cut out of wood.
The deer now appeared truly a monarch of the forest; a little weak in the shoulders perhaps, and rather full-chested behind, but still a noble animal.
Not to be outdone with her own idea, Blossom wrestled vigorously with her subject, and ere we had ceased admiring the deer, had very nearly completed a sheep--a sheep so fleecy and short in the legs that it was at once voted the greatest triumph of all, though WE personally and privately thought, and still think, that, for true genius, Bud's idea of the pigs far exceeded any of them. The white almond certainly made a most admirable sheep's head, but then apple, of which the body was made, grew rapidly rusty when once peeled--so much so that we had to scrape our sheep once or twice in the course of the evening to restore its fleeciness.
Having made large herds of deer, flocks of goats and sheep, not to mention litters of pigs, we disposed some of them on the mantel-piece and what-nots, while others were reserved to make a grand pastoral scene on the supper table. Having finished these, we devoted our energies to constructing scent-bags and mice, the latter made out of apple-seeds, as described in a previous chapter. Here the transcendent genius of Bud again asserted itself--she invented a rat; a rat made out of an unbleached almond. When grouped with the mice and flour-sacks the effect was truly grand.
"What shall we make next?" was the general inquiry.
"Oh, can't you make something that will jump up?" eagerly suggested Little Pickle, who had kept pretty quiet during our zoological researches.
"Can't you make something that will jump up?" This was so vague that we were fain to demand further light.
"Oh, you know at our school one of the boys made a kind of thing with a bit of wax that jumped up and frightened you."