THE " CALL OF THE WILD " 133 



stretching, she would reach the playful point, 

 and, jumping to the ground, run away to amuse 

 herself ; or else begin to tease me, biting my shoes, 

 pulling at my skirt, and not resting for a moment 

 until I rolled her over and joined in the romp. 

 By the way, a noticeable point about this cub was 

 that she did not smell in the least, there was no 

 objectionable foxy odour, and after playing with 

 her there was no suggestion of fox upon one's 

 clothes. As she was fed perfectly naturally, flesh 

 forming the greater part of her diet, I can only 

 attribute this to the fact that her surroundings were 

 kept clean, that she was not allowed to lie on 

 the same bedding for long. Possibly the character- 

 istic fox smell would have developed as she got 

 older. 



To return to her playful ways, one evening 

 she kept worrying me when I was writing a letter, 

 until, at last, in desperation, I flung a cushion 

 at her, when with great delight she pounced upon 

 it. It yielded under her feet, and for quite ten 

 minutes she jumped up and down on it, pouncing 

 again and again on the soft thing, until tired of it 

 she rushed outside. When she went into the 

 bushes and failed to pay any attention to my calls, 

 I used to get some one to go to the farther side 

 and make a noise, but it had to be a different 

 one each time or the spell failed to work, and 

 instead of running hastily home she merely went 

 up to them to see what they were doing. 



One evening (it was July ist, and even now I 

 hardly like to write of it) she went out as usual 



