Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends   By: Roy J. (Roy Judson) Snell (1878-1959)

[Illustration: "Such ugly, bent noses I never saw before in all my life, either." FRONTISPIECE. See Page 21 ]

LITTLE WHITE FOX AND HIS ARCTIC FRIENDS

BY

ROY J. SNELL

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE F. KERR

[Device]

BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1916

Copyright, 1916 , BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. All rights reserved

Published, September, 1916

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. LITTLE WHITE FOX MAKES A DISCOVERY 1

II. LITTLE MISS PTARMIGAN FOOLS HIM 9

III. HE GETS HIS HEAD THUMPED 19

IV. WHEN LITTLE FOXES QUARREL 27

V. LITTLE WHITE FOX MEETS BARRED SEAL 34

VI. LITTLE WHITE FOX HELPS HIMSELF 41

VII. LITTLE WHITE BEAR AND LITTLE BLACK BEAR 48

VIII. TROUBLE FOR LITTLE WHITE BEAR 54

IX. LITTLE BLACK BEAR'S DISCOVERY 61

X. FUN FOR TWO LITTLE BEARS 67

XI. BIG WHITE BEAR MEETS HUSKIE 74

XII. LITTLE WHITE FOX GOES HUNTING 83

XIII. BIG WHITE BEAR'S KITCHEN 89

XIV. BIG WHITE BEAR FINDS LITTLE WHITE FOX 95

XV. LITTLE WHITE FOX GOES FISHING 101

XVI. LITTLE BROWN SEAL'S NARROW ESCAPE 108

XVII. A STRANGE JOURNEY 115

XVIII. LITTLE WHITE FOX COMES HOME 122

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"Such ugly, bent noses I never saw before in all my life, either." Frontispiece

"Now," he said, when he had finished fishing, "we will have dinner." PAGE 38

Little White Bear knew right away what he had done. " 52

"I am going to make your teeth chatter so you can't call your master." " 81

Big White Bear popped right up out of the ocean! " 119

She was going back to his own dear beach. " 128

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Six of the Little White Fox Stories appeared serially in the Continent , to whose publishers my thanks are due for permission to publish them in book form.

LITTLE WHITE FOX AND HIS ARCTIC FRIENDS

CHAPTER I

LITTLE WHITE FOX MAKES A DISCOVERY

Little White Fox was very, very much worried, for something dreadful had happened, something he couldn't account for at all: Tdariuk, the reindeer, was dead!

Tdariuk was not related to Little White Fox. And he wasn't a bit in the world like him. He was many times bigger than Little White Fox would ever be, and he was quite different from him in every way. But all the same, Little White Fox loved him. If you had asked him why he loved the big reindeer, he would probably have told you that, for one thing, Tdariuk, in spite of his huge body, was very gentle and kind. None of the little animals of the tundra was afraid of him. Little Mrs. Ptarmigan calmly hunted for dry blueberries and weed seed right beside him while he cropped his moss. And when he drew close to the shore by the sea, Little Brown Seal never thought of such a thing as slipping off his rock and hiding in the water. Even if there were no other reason, wouldn't Tdariuk's gentleness alone make Little White Fox love him?

Now when Little White Fox discovered that his big, kind friend was dead, he ran home as fast as his legs could carry him to tell his mother the sad news.

"Mother! Mother!" he called tumbling into his home under the great rock, "Tdariuk is dead!"

"Tdariuk dead!" cried Madam White Fox. "Who could have been mean enough to kill him?"

"I don't know who killed him, but he's dead, I know that," said Little White Fox, the tears running down his cheeks.