And though they knew it not, they were
learning things every hour of the sunny, playful afternoons that they
would remember and find useful all the days of their life.
So the funny little hunt went on, the mother watching gravely under a
bush where she was inconspicuous, and the cubs, full of zest and
inexperience, missing the flying tidbits more often than they swallowed
them, until they learned at last to locate all game accurately before
chasing or alarming it; and that is the rule, learned from hunting
grasshoppers, which a wolf follows ever afterward. Even after they knew
just where the grasshopper was hiding, watching them after a jump, and
leaped upon him swiftly from a distance, he often got away when they
lifted their paws to eat him. For the grasshopper was not dead under the
light paw, as they supposed, but only pressed into the moss waiting for
his chance to jump. Then the cubs learned another lesson: to hold their
game down with both paws pressed closely together, inserting their noses
like a wedge and keeping every crack of escape shut tight until they had
the slippery morsel safe under their back teeth.
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