It makes
a great difference whether you are outside the trap, or in it. And
Frisky Squirrel was in it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't
get away.
He made up his mind that if anybody tried to lift him out of the box
he would bite him. But Johnnie Green had caught squirrels before. He
pulled on a pair of heavy gloves, and all Frisky's biting did no
good--or harm--at all.
When Johnnie reached home he put his prize into a neat little wire
cage. As soon as Frisky found himself inside it he looked all around,
to see if there wasn't some opening big enough to squeeze through. And
sure enough! there was a little door. And in a twinkling Frisky had
popped himself through it and had started to run.
He ran and ran. But strange to say, all his running took him nowhere
at all. At first he couldn't discover what was the matter. But after a
while he saw that he was inside a broad wheel, made of wire. And when
he ran the wheel simply spun 'round and 'round.
He stopped running then. For he thought of the horses that made the
horse-power go. He was in just the same fix that they were in. He
could run as fast as he pleased, but he would still stay right there
inside the wheel.
Poor Frisky Squirrel crept back into his cage. He remembered what his
mother had said, when he wished he could be a horse, and make the
tread-mill go. "You'd soon grow tired of it," she had told him.
At the time, Frisky hadn't believed her. But now he knew that his
mother was wiser than he was.
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