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Nutcracker, like many other good old gentlemen squirrels, found that Christmas dinners and other things were apt to go as his wife said, and his wife was apt to go as young Featherhead said; and so, when Christmas came, the Chipmunks were not invited, for the first time in many years. The Chipmunks, however, took all pleasantly, and accepted poor old Mrs.
One September afternoon, while walking quietly through the woods, my attention was attracted by an unusual sound coming from an oak grove, a favorite haunt of gray squirrels. The crows were cawing in the same direction; but every few minutes would come a strange cracking sound c-r-r-rack-a-rack-rack, as if some one had a giant nutcracker and were snapping it rapidly.
Nutcracker fell on her husband's neck with both paws, and wept, and besought him so piteously to have patience with her darling, that old Nutcracker, who was himself a soft-hearted old squirrel, was prevailed upon to put up with the airs and graces of his young scapegrace a little longer; and secretly in his silly old heart he revolved the question whether possibly it might not be that a great genius was actually to come of his household.
Now Uncle Lucky knew Old Squirrel Nutcracker very well, and as the old gentleman squirrel was very nice and well behaved it made Uncle Lucky provoked to think that his son should be such a scatterbrains. So Uncle Lucky stopped the automobile and said: "Well, young squirrel, have you been troubling your father lately?" and Scatterbrains answered, "No, Mr. Lucky Lefthindfoot, not lately.
"Oh, it is the nutcracker!" said one, "the musician, you know " "Who can the pall-bearers be?" "Pooh! play-actors." "I say, just look at poor old Cibot's funeral. There is one worker the less. What a man! he could never get enough of work!" "He never went out." "He never kept Saint Monday." "How fond he was of his wife!" "Ah! There is an unhappy woman!"
Mansfield fixed her blazing eyes on her daughter, slightly drawing down her gray eyebrows. "Well, it's rather a secret." Charmian glanced round at the others, then she added: "It's about the Nutcracker." "The Nutcracker!" Heath puckered up his forehead. "Yes." She moved a little, and looked at the chair not far from the fire on which she had sat when first she came into the room.
Of course it would be madness for a woman to address unknown red-headed men with the look of an engineer about them and a book of Dickens in their hands; or perky old women with nutcracker faces; or girls with wide humorous mouths. Oh, it couldn't be done, I suppose.
Mr. and Mrs. Birkenfeld had gone to church, and with them Paula and Miss Hanenwinkel. In the sitting-room, Jule and Hunne were harmoniously discussing over a big dish of hazel-nuts, in how many different ways they could make the nutcracker crack a nut.
Nutcracker one day, when he was expressing these ideas, "it seems to me that you are too hard on poor Tip; he is a most excellent son and brother, and I wish you would be civil to him." "Oh, I don't doubt that Tip is GOOD enough," said Featherhead carelessly; "but then he is so very common! he hasn't an idea in his skull above his nuts and his hole.
He could walk up to a five-barred gate and clear it, alighting on the other side like a fallen feather; could row all day, and then dance all night; could fling a cricket ball a hundred and six yards; had a lathe and a tool-box, and would make you in a trice a chair, a table, a doll, a nutcracker, or any other moveable, useful, or the very reverse.
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