The sun was still high in the sky, the air was extremely fresh, and smelled sweeter than usual, and the woods rang with a thousand voices, for everyone had crept out of his shelter and was running excitedly, telling what had just happened.

Before they went on to the meadow, they passed the great oak that stood near the forest’s edge, close to their trail. They always had to pass that beautiful big tree when they went to the meadow.

This time the squirrel was sitting on a branch and greeted them. Bambi was good friends with the squirrel. The first time he met him he took him for a very small deer because of the squirrel’s red coat and stared at him in surprise. But Bambi had been very childish at that time and had known nothing at all.

The squirrel pleased him greatly from the first. He was so thoroughly civil, and talkative. And Bambi loved to see how wonderfully he could turn, and climb, and leap, and balance himself. In the middle of a conversation the squirrel would run up and down the smooth tree trunk as though there was nothing to it. Or he would sit upright on a swaying branch, balance himself comfortably with his bushy tail that stuck up so gracefully behind him, display his white chest, hold his little forepaws elegantly in front of him, nod his head this way and that, laugh with his jolly eyes, and, in a ­twinkling, say a lot of comical and interesting things. Then he would come down again, so swiftly and with such leaps that you expected him to tumble on his head.

He twitched his long tail violently and called to them from overhead, “Good day! Good day! It’s so nice of you to come over.” Bambi and his mother stopped.

The squirrel ran down the smooth trunk. “Well,” he chattered, “did you get through it all right? Of course, I see that everything is first rate. That’s the main thing.”

He ran up the trunk again like lightning and said, “It’s too wet for me down there. Wait, I’m going to look for a better place. I hope you don’t mind. Thanks, I knew you wouldn’t. And we can talk just as well from here.”

He ran back and forth along a straight limb. “It was a bad business,” he said, “a monstrous uproar! You wouldn’t believe how scared I was. I hunched myself up as still as a mouse in the corner and hardly dared move. That’s the worst of it. Having to sit there and not move. And all the time you’re hoping nothing will happen. But my tree is wonderful in such cases. There’s no denying it, my tree is wonderful! I’ll say that for it. I’m satisfied with it. As long as I’ve had it, I’ve never wanted any other. But when it cuts loose the way it did today you’re sure to get frightened no matter where you are.”

The squirrel sat up, balancing himself with his handsome upright tail. He displayed his white chest and pressed both forepaws protestingly against his heart. You believed without his adding anything that he had been excited.

“We’re going to the meadow now to dry ourselves off in the sun,” Bambi’s mother said.

“That’s a good idea,” cried the squirrel, “you’re really so clever. I’m always saying how clever you are.” With a bound he sprang onto a higher branch. “You couldn’t do anything better than go to the meadow now,” he called down.