Sandy crept up to one of them and sniffed at it.
He was glad that he had done that, for he smelled
milk. There was no mistake about it.
Sandy Chipmunk couldn’t crawl up the side of
the pail, it was so smooth and slippery. So he
jumped right up and stood on its edge. And looking
inside, he saw that the pail was almost full of milk.
He knew then that Henry Skunk had told the truth.
By bending down Sandy was just able to reach the milk.
And he began drinking it as fast as he could.
It was so delicious that he forgot all about Johnnie
Green and his father and the hired man.
With his head inside the pail, of course Sandy couldn’t
see what happened in the barn. The more he drank,
the further down he had to stretch his neck.
And when at last he heard a shout, and a milking-stool
came sailing through the air not far above the pail,
Sandy was so startled that he lost his balance and
went plump! into the milk.
Luckily, Sandy Chipmunk knew how to swim. So
he managed to keep his nose in the air or he would
certainly have drowned.
“Where on earth did that chipmunk go?”
he heard Johnnie Green say as he picked up his stool.
You see, Johnnie never once thought of looking inside
the pail.
Still, Sandy Chipmunk was in a fix. For the inside
of the pail was as smooth and slippery as the outside.
And of course he couldn’t jump out, for
there was nothing from which he could spring.
Now it happened that the pail of milk stood not far
behind the surly old cow that had told Sandy not to
be silly, when he asked her for some milk to drink,
in the pasture that day. Johnnie Green’s
shouting and the stool hurtling through the air displeased
her. And since she was not the sort to hide her
ill nature, she promptly kicked the milkpail over.
For a moment Sandy Chipmunk thought that this time
the end of the world had certainly come. The
old cow’s foot crashed against the pail and sent
it flying against the stone wall on which the barn
was built. And Sandy tumbled out upon the floor
in a sea of milk.
He didn’t wait to learn exactly what had happened.
For as soon as he could scramble to his feet he dashed
out of the barn and tore across the fields towards
the pasture.
Later, when he reached his house and sat down to rest,
he soon forgot his fright. For he had a very
pleasant time licking himself clean. That was
the way Sandy Chipmunk always made himself spick and
span. And though there may be some people who
would not consider such an act to be in the best of
taste, Sandy Chipmunk thought what was left of the
milk tasted very good. And since his mother
did not object to what he was doing, perhaps no one
else ought to.
