Warm, Cuddly and Oh So Tiny!

Another time that we searched for the missing Mrs. Roo. Katy found her sound asleep in a rose-colored teacup on the breakfast porch. One night Mr. Kangar chewed a hole in the screen and hopped away. Mrs. Roo could have followed but for some reason she did not. She seemed so lonely there huddled amid the bits of flame-colored wool that I carried her to my desk. There she waxed enthusiastic over the cubbyholes. Before I knew it she had chewed up enough postage stamps for fifty letters. Mrs. Roo stood for a long time watching my hand glide over the paper. She edged closer and closer, rushed up and lightly touched my finger tips with her little bewhiskered nose, then looked up at me shyly. My breath stuck in my throat. She was too adorable.

The sound of my typewriter drove her into a panic. Those little transparent ears could not stand the banging. So I put her down in the box that I now kept close to my feet. But always when I wrote with pen or pencil Mrs. Roo was there to make rushes at my fingers and demolish my postage stamps. Dad missed Mr. Kangar from his old armchair when he read at nights. Often, between chapters, when Dad thoughtfully smoked his pipe, he wondered what had happened to Mr. Kangar-was he in the garden or had he gone far away?

One afternoon after a rain I saw a little fluff of fawn color go bouncing across the lawn. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Yes, it was Mr. Kangar. Just then brother and his pals came warwhooping around the house and Mr. Kangar raced to the flowerbed. I found there the entrance of the burrow. Around it I scattered a goodly amount of grain and in the morning it was gone. One day I decided that Mrs. Roo seemed wistfully unhappy. I offered her watermelon seeds and she paid no attention. When she refused postage stamps I became frantic. She must be longing for Mr. Kangar. So that evening I put her near his burrow, whereupon she gaily scurried into it.

I did not weep but I admit that I wanted to for I loved the fairy-like Mrs. Roo with her captivating ways. I wandered disconsolately in the garden. How easy it is to love any fragile beautiful thing that is warm and cuddly and oh, so tiny!

At night, I know, they patter out into the garden and dance as they did long ago under an Oklahoma moon. In the morning I find the fairy traces of their wanderings in the dust of the garden path. Last night I saw Mr. Kangar and Mrs. Roo skipping about in the garden-little bits of elfin fluff touched with the moon's silver. And I wonder if their great dark eyes sparkle with happiness and if they have found life in our garden as gay and free as long ago in the sand hills.