[Illustration: THE LOG SCHOOLHOUSE “The schoolhouse stood on the bank of a little river.” (Page 17)]
I say I should like to tell you about that strange night; only, of course, you would not listen, with Baby Mitchell waiting up in his tree to be rescued.
But I must say that many rooms do not make kinder hearts or better manners than the lady found in those two crowded little rooms of the log-house.
The lady was not used to living as her new friends had to live, and she could not get used to it in time to go to sleep that night. So when morning came she should have felt very tired after the long walk of the day before and the sleepless night. But, remember, she was in an enchanted forest,—that is, it seemed to have enchanted air, for the moment she got out in the morning and breathed deep of the pure high air she felt as fresh as she ever felt in her life.
And the school-teacher did look so fresh and pretty!
Why, she was just the school-teacher. She was young and pretty, and the little children loved her, and went to school every morning with her through the deep woods and over the many rivers.
She lived at their house during term-time, and she had just come, for school was to begin the next Monday. Her own home was in another part of the mountains.
When the lady asked her how she liked living out in this wild and lonely place, and teaching in the wild and lonely schoolhouse, she smiled until her pretty white teeth showed, and said,—
So you see the little children had good reason to love her.
LITTLE MITCHELL IS FOUND, AND TAKES A STRANGE JOURNEY
When the little gray bunny mother did not come home, the babies in the crotch of the old chestnut tree got very hungry, and I am sure they cried all night.
No doubt they were cold too, for they had no little furry mother to curl herself about them and keep them warm. Poor babies! I suppose they cuddled as close together as they could, and cried and cried, and wondered why mother did not come home and take care of them.
At last, when morning came, the strongest one—that was our Little Mitchell, you know—felt so desperate that, although he was only two or three days old and had not got his eyes open yet, he climbed up to the crotch of the tree to find out what he could.