They turned up their
heads sidewise and blinked at the sky, all blue and calm and infinite,
with white clouds sailing over it like swans on a limpid lake; and one
stood up on his hind legs and reached up both paws, like a kitten, to
pull down a cloud to play with. Then the wind stirred a feather near
them, the white feather of a ptarmigan which they had eaten yesterday,
and forgetting the big world and the sail and the cloud, the cubs took
to playing with the feather, chasing and worrying and tumbling over each
other, while the gaunt old mother wolf looked down from her rock and
watched and was satisfied.
_Noel and Mooka_
Down on the shore, that same bright June afternoon, little Noel and his
sister Mooka were going on wonderful sledge journeys, meeting wolves and
polar bears and caribou and all sorts of adventures, more wonderful by
far than any that ever came to imagination astride of a rocking-horse.
They had a rare team of dogs, Caesar and Wolf and Grouch and the
rest,--five or six uneasy crabs which they had caught and harnessed to a
tiny sledge made from a curved root and a shingle tied together with a
bit of sea-kelp.
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