128 ^ SIGNS AND SEASONS 



sets them adrift. Winter, like poverty, makes us 

 acquainted with strange bedfellows. 



For my part, my nearest approach to a strange 

 bedfellow is the little gray rabbit that has taken up 

 her abode under my study floor. As she spends 

 the day here and is out larking at night, she is not 

 much of a bedfellow, after all. It is probable that 

 I disturb her slumbers more than she does mine. 

 I think she is some support to me under there, — 

 a silent, wide-eyed witness and backer; a type of 

 the gentle and harmless in savage nature. She has 

 no sagacity to give me or lend me, but that soft, 

 nimble foot of hers, and that touch as of cotton 

 wherever she goes, are worthy of emulation. I 

 think I can feel her good-will through the floor, 

 and I hope she can mine. When I have a happy 

 thought, I imagine her ears twitch, especially when 

 I think of the sweet apple I will place by her 

 doorway at night. I wonder if that fox chanced 

 to catch a glimpse of her the other night when he 

 stealthily leaped over the fence near by and walked 

 along between the study and the house? How 

 clearly one could read that it was not a little dog 

 that had passed there ! There was something fur- 

 tive in the track; it shied off away from the house 

 and around it, as if eying it suspiciously ; and then 

 it had the caution and deliberation of the fox, — 

 bold, bold, but not too bold; wariness was in every 

 footprint. If it had been a little dog that had 

 chanced to wander that way, when he crossed my 

 path he would have followed it up to the barn and 



