This
friendship was not quite commonplace.
Ab, who could climb like a young monkey, laid most casually the
foundation for this companionship which was to affect his future life. He
had scrambled, one day, up a tree standing near the cave, and, climbing
out along a limb near its top, had found a comfortable resting-place, and
there upon the swaying bough was "teetering" comfortably, when something
in another tree, further up the river, caught his sharp eye. It was a
dark mass,--it might have been anything caught in a treetop,--but the odd
part of it was that it was "teetering" just as he was. Ab watched the
object for a long time curiously, and finally decided that it must be
another boy, or perhaps a girl, who was swaying in the distant tree.
There came to him a vigorous thought. He resolved to become better
acquainted; he resolved dimly, for this was the first time that any idea
of further affiliation with anyone had come into his youthful mind. Of
course, it must not be understood that he had been in absolute retirement
throughout his young but not uneventful life. Other cave men and women,
sometimes accompanied by their children, had visited the cave of One-Ear
and Red-Spot and Ab had become somewhat acquainted with other human
beings and with what were then the usages of the best hungry society.
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