Meanwhile, the calf would look with wonder in her big, velvet-soft eyes, with probably no slightest notion in her silly head as to what was making her new mother so excited." "How inconvenient that they couldn't talk," exclaimed the Child, who had great faith in the virtue of explanations.
Uncle Andy rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"I suppose," he said, after a pause, "that the wild creatures _do_ talk among themselves, more or less and after a fashion.

But, you see, such simple speech as the calf possessed was only what she had inherited, and that, of course, was cow language and naturally unintelligible to a moose.

However, babies learn easily, and it was not long before she and her new mother understood each other pretty well on most points of importance.
"There were wildcats and foxes and a pair of big, tuft-eared, wild-eyed lynxes living about the lake, and these all came creeping up one after another, under the cover of the thickets, to stare in amazement at the alien little one so tenderly mothered by the great cow moose.

They had seen calves, on the farms of the settlement, and they regarded this one not only with the greed of the hungry prowler, but with a particularly cruel hostility as one of the retainers of feared and hated Man.

But for all their anger they took care not to thrust themselves upon the attention of the moose.