Before they has missed her very long, a poor old woman and her husband had climbed that part of Mount Varcrobis. Nobody in the village down below cared much for Mr. and Mrs. Ikkisfield, as they were called; and they had decided to go elsewhere and see if they could find some friends. The Eigleens took pity on them, and at last persuaded them to live in the brown cottage in the woods, and to let the Eigleens themselves go to the house of friends of theirs, the Wraspanes. It was the Wraspanes’ rhododendron field that Eepersip had thought so beautiful.
The Eigleens, being exceedingly kind people, gladly gave up their cottage and their beautiful garden to Mr. and Mrs. Ikkisfield. Indeed, these things were no joy to them, now that they had lost Eepersip, for whose sake they had made the garden. The old couple were delighted, and, thanking the Eigleens very kindly, they moved in that same evening, the Eigleens leaving some of their belongings with them.
Eepersip stayed for many days with the doe and her fawn, and then, her feet having become tough, she crossed the brooklet and went on up Eiki-ennern Peak. Near the top, in a small sheltered place, she found a dear little pool surrounded with moss and ferns, amongst which some iris bloomed. It had a sandy bottom, over which swam tiny silver minnows. When they turned over and the sun shone on their bellies Eepersip saw a streak of silver. At last, when she got to the top, she saw that on one side it was a vast daisied slope, down, down; and on another it was wooded to the foot. From where she stood, range after range spread out before her, lake after lake beneath her, with the crimson of the now setting sun gloriously reflected in them. It was like fairyland. And when Eepersip turned southward, she beheld the almighty ocean with the exquisite sunset colours reflected in it as in the lakes. That night she slept on a soft bed of moss in a hollow down near the pool.
The next morning, after she had made a good breakfast on the juicy root of a plant which she found, she lay down by the pool and gazed at the sky, the way she had done on the second day of her wildness. And as she lay there it grew so quiet that a chipmunk stole out of a tiny hole that he had dug between the roots of a tree. He came to her, sniffed at a cracker she was munching, and tickled her cheek with his nose; whereupon she cautiously put out her hand with a piece of the cracker on it. The chipmunk was frightened and ran away. But the piece of cracker looked very tempting, and before long he lost his fear and ventured close again. Step by step he crept along, until, with a frightened squeal, he seized the piece and disappeared. Eepersip waited, laughing. In a few minutes he came back again, and this time he took the piece that she held out to him, running only a few steps. The third time he took it calmly and deliberately and ate it without running at all, evidently convinced that Eepersip was a friend. And the fourth time he was even more bold, going so far as to sit on her stomach while he ate. But by that time, between them, they had licked the platter clean—the cracker was gone.
“Just like the doe and her fawn,” Eepersip thought. How fearless he was, the fuzzy brown little creature! It seemed to happy Eepersip that all the wild was ready to make friends, as if nothing were afraid of her. She felt more than ever that she could never leave these entrancing forests. She could never, never go back, she mused. How wonderful it was to lie there watching the things that were happening, and actually to have one of the inhabitants of these woods—a timid one that was usually afraid—come up to her and eat from her hand! This adventure had certainly tightened in her heart the desire to stay always and become acquainted with more and more creatures—with the swallows she loved so well, and with the little fairy butterflies.
Whenever she went down to the sheltered spot by the pool, she saw so many beautiful things here and there that she never knew what to do in her delight. Iris blossomed in gold and blue; butterflies danced overhead like yellow rose-petals flying in the breeze. Once, running over to the pool, she found a tiny beach, about fifteen inches long and half a foot wide—no more than a handful of sand completely hidden in a forest of ferns. Across it ran the chipmunk’s footprints, and the marks of his wee claws could be plainly seen in the damp sand. That little beach was the earth’s dear treasure, so it seemed to Eepersip, alone in that wild place. In the fields all around, thousands of buttercups blossomed, and great beds of daisies whitened the earth’s brown surface.
In one place, among dark ferns, grew columbine, gay little gypsies curtseying in the breeze. Their colours spoke to her of dawn, gold sunset and white clouds, snowbanks fringed with icicles, night sky entwined with moonbeams, black clouds and radiant sun, or orange, yellow, and scarlet leaves—autumn leaves. She gathered some, and made a rainbow wreath of blossoms; and curling about her hair, they danced again.
Beneath the branches of a white pine grew blushing lady-slippers, which Eepersip had never seen before. “Dawn comes to earth sometimes,” she thought, “bringing her flower-clouds and clasping them with pearl seeds.”
Eepersip was anxious to know what was on the southern slope of this highest peak of Mt. Varcrobis. So one day along she went, happily singing, until she came to it.
