Page:I Know a Secret (1927).pdf/101

 could happen out here. My cousin told it to me, he is one of the squirrels in Riverside Park.

There was once a very small boy called Philip who used to go walking in the park with his nurse. And like all proper boys, he always took along a bag of peanuts to feed the squirrels.

I think that in the beginning the trouble was more the nurse's fault than Philip's. Her father had been in the circus business and perhaps for that reason she had a strong passion for peanuts. As they walked along the streets on the way to Riverside Drive she could not resist eating them, and just to be fair she allowed Philip to have some too. The five-cent bag of peanuts, as every squirrel knows, does not hold nearly as many as it used to in the good old days; and sometimes by the time they got to the park there were hardly any nuts left for the squirrels.

That, of course, was regrettable; but it could be forgiven. Any squirrel can understand other people too having a weakness for peanuts. What was really unfair was that Philip learned that the squirrels were easily fooled by empty