tter than to
eat them whenever it got the chance. But the whale had only one--at a
time, that is--and she always used to think there was nothing else like
it in the world. There are lots of other mothers as foolish as that.
Yours, for instance, now."

The Babe laughed. It pleased him when he understood one of Uncle
Andy's jokes--which was not always, by any means. He squatted himself
on the moss before the log, where he could stare straight up into Uncle
Andy's face with his blue, steady, expectant eyes.

"It was a long way off from Silverwater," began Uncle Andy in a
far-away voice, and with a far-away look in his eyes, "that the whale
calf was born. It was up North, where the summer sun swung low over a
world of cold green seas, low grey shores, crumbling white ice-fields,
and floating mountains of ice that flashed with lovely, fairy-like
tints of palest blue and amethyst. The calf himself, with his slippery
greyish-black back and under-parts of a dirty cream color, was not
beautiful--though, of course, his mother thought him so, as he lay
nursing just under her great fin, rocked gently by the long, slow
Arctic swells."

"What's Arctic swells?" interrupted the Babe, wrinkling his forehead
more than ever. He had a vision of tall, smart-looking Eskimos, in
wonderful furs; and it seemed to him very curious that the old mother
whale should be so tame as to let them come close enough to rock her
baby for her.

"Rollers, I mean; Big waves!" grunted Uncle Andy discontentedly. "A
fellow has to be so extraordinarily literal with you to-day! Now, if
you interrupt again, I'll stop, and you can get Bill to tell you all
about it. As I was going to say, he--the calf, not Bill--was about
eight or nine feet long. He looked all head. And his head looked all
mouth. And his mouth--but you could not see into that for it was very
busy nursing. His mother, however, lay with her mouth half open, a
vast cavern of a mouth, nearly a third the length of her body--and it
looked all whalebone. For, you must know, she was of the ancient and
honorable family of the Right Whales, who scorn to grow any teeth, and
therefore must live on soup so to speak."

Here he paused, and looked at the Babe as much as to say, "Now, I
suppose you're going to interrupt again, in spite of all I've said."
But the Babe, restraining his curiosity about the soup, only sat
staring at him with solemn eyes. So he went on.

"You see, it was a most con