Squirrel World Read Online Free Page B

get off when that man and woman do. That’s how we’ll know where we’re going.”
    The bus lurched and started moving.
    “Hold tight!” I shouted.
    Lenox held on tight, and so did I.

CHAPTER SEVEN
In Search of Blooming Vales

    Our ride was a bumpy one. One moment we thought we were about to be thrown off, and the next thing we knew the bus was slowing to a stop. But just as we were about to relax our hold, it took off again. It’s not easy riding on a bus, I decided. No wonder I’d never tried it before.
    At one of our stops, Lenox asked me, “What does it mean—Blooming Dales?”
    I wasn’t certain, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. “Let’s figure it out,” I said as the bus began to move again. “The first part is easy: I’ve heard people in the park talk about the plants. They look at the flowers and say, ‘What lovely blooms.’ Or they say, ‘The flowers are blooming.’ Obviously
blooming
means ‘flowering.’”
    “And
dales
?” Lenox asked.
    I paused a moment, thinking hard.
Dales? Dales?
I knew I’d heard the word before.
    Suddenly it came to me. I’d heard the word in one of the poems that PeeWee read aloud. How did it go?
    I wandered lonely as a cloud
    that floats on high o’er vales and hills …
    Oh, dear. I was wrong. The poem said
vales
and not
dales
. The tourist had probably gotten it confused. She meant to say
vales
, I decided. And I’d learned from PeeWee that
vales
means “valleys.”
    “Flowering valleys!” I shouted to Lenox, as the bus took off again. I was delighted that my reasoning had produced such a happy answer to our question. “Lexington Avenue may be a disappointment,” I told my cousin, “but Blooming Vales, which is another part of the avenue, will be magnificent.” I began to imagine an area filled with golden daffodils, brilliant red tulips, white and purple lilac bushes, bright pink rhododendron plants, and lush soft green grass. No matter that in our park each of those flowers blooms in a different week. In Blooming Vales, those anda hundred different varieties would all be in flower at the same time. Also, unlike this part of Lexington Avenue, there would be no more cement and no rain.
    “We’ll be there soon,” I promised Lenox.
    I could hardly wait.
    Each time the bus stopped, its doors opened. Some people got on, and some people got off. Lenox and I watched carefully. Humans look more or less the same to us, so we had to be sure that we didn’t confuse the couple we were following with another pair, a couple who was going somewhere else.
    “That’s them!” I shouted to Lenox as the bus came to another stop and I saw the man and woman we were following get off.
    We jumped down from our perch. I was relieved to be on firm ground again, evenif it was cement. We watched as the couple stood looking about. Then they began to cross to the other side of the street.
    “Come along!” I shouted to Lenox.
    I was so busy watching the couple that I didn’t have time to look around. But from the corner of my eye, I could see that this part of Lexington Avenue looked no more interesting than the part where we’d been before.
    “They’re going inside that building,” said Lenox.
    “Then we have to follow them,” I replied. “It must lead to Blooming Vales.”
    We stood waiting for someone to pull open one of the big doors, and then we scooted quickly inside.
    At once, I could sense that I was in a place that was unlike any I’d ever been in before.I could smell the perfume of flowers. It was much stronger and sweeter than the perfume of the flowers in the park. But when I looked around, I couldn’t see any flowers at all. There were paths leading in all directions, and Lenox and I didn’t know which way to run first.
    “Look! I never saw a squirrel inside the store before!” shouted someone.
    “There are two of them!”
    “Make yourself scarce!” I called out to Lenox. I was afraid someone would attempt to chase us away before we’d had