SPRING HAD REALLY COME TO the forest. The chestnuts were laden with sticky buds. The oak wore a lacy coat of green. The forest paths, the open glades and the meadow were misted with young grass and darkly patched with purple violets.
Already the swallow was darting ceaselessly around. The woodpecker’s drill drummed against the trees. An early butterfly or two drifted on the wind, and bees went once more about their business.
The scent of growth, the sound of busy life were in the air. The breeze that blew was soft. It whispered to the daffodils who nodded back. Every day the concert of the birds swelled sweetly.
Gurri remembered the lark and spoke of it, of its heartwarming song, its modest mien and circumstances.
Membo said eagerly, “I should like to hear it sing.”
Gurri shook her head. “It lives in the fields where He is always present. It’s a dangerous song for us to hear.”
The roe-deer lost their winter coats and put on brilliant summer red. Geno’s crown grew in two horns each the size and thickness of a finger. These horns still kept a mosslike covering, but he was inordinately proud of them, looking at himself constantly in the mirror of the pool to discover if they had grown.
Membo and Nello also had their budding crowns, but theirs were not so far advanced as Geno’s. This gave them additional cause to regard him as their chief.
The sapling took the tall oak’s advice and grew with new vigor. Little by little it filled the space left it by the fallen branch. Silently but mightily it strove to achieve its purpose before the oak’s leaves should become thick enough to reduce the rays of light that reached it.
The roe-deer, on the way to their meadow, ate the lower buds from tree and bush, rejoicing in their juiciness. Then they would run across the meadow, dodging and chasing one another, twisting, turning, bucking, stopping abruptly on stiffened legs, while the grass hissed silkily behind them.
Faline watched them fondly. All of them were handsome, agile, gay. Membo was much less nervous. Geno grew daily more like his father—in looks and in character.
Bambi did not visit them. His crown was slow in coming. He thought of them often, especially of Geno; but without his crown he felt he could not leave his retreat.
Most of the bucks roamed the forest paths again, their antlers fully grown, but still shrouded in their mossy covers. Soon they would strip these coverings away, leaving the naked points bright and shining.
The Kings, too, began to appear, still to the great dismay of Faline, although she made a brave effort to control her nervousness. She even spent time trying to persuade Membo and Nello of the beauty of the Kings and of their close relationship to the roe-deer. Nello and Membo were not so easily impressed with the soundness of these arguments, however, and their loud “ba-ohs” whenever the Kings appeared rang throughout the forest.
Gurri told her adopted brothers of the encounter she had witnessed between the rival Kings in the clearing.
“My goodness!” Membo exclaimed. “I certainly don’t want to have anything to do with creatures who are as fierce as that!”
“But later in the year they were very gentle,” Gurri mused.
“I wonder why,” said Geno.
Finally Bambi came to see them.
His antlers had grown to their full dimensions. He had rubbed the covering skin from them on the stout trees of the forest and now, stained by the sap of the trees he had injured in stripping them, they gleamed bright as dark ivory.
Membo and Nello were awed at his appearance, but they conducted themselves well, standing straight and still, awaiting his notice. He was in an affable mood, glad to be united with his family again, glad that he no longer had to lurk hidden from his kind in the recesses of his cave.
“Well,” he said, after greeting his mate and children, “whom have we here?”
“This is Membo and this Nello,” Faline informed him.
He saluted them courteously.
“They are my new children,” Faline said.
“So-ho!” Bambi fixed them with his dark and brilliant eyes. “Your new children, are they! Well, this is rather a surprise.”
Membo and Nello shifted uneasily.
“Who may your father be?” Bambi inquired.
“He’s dead, sir,” they replied. “He was slain by the thunder-stick.”
“I have adopted them,” Faline went on. “They have neither father nor mother.”
“I see. Well, let me look at them.”
Membo and Nello walked sheepishly before him.
“Nice lads,” Bambi said at last. “They move well. They hold their heads high. How do they get on with our friends? With Lana and Boso, for instance?”
Silence fell upon them all. None of them knew how to answer.
“Well?” Bambi urged impatiently. “Are you all dumb?”
“We don’t see them any more,” Geno said at last.
“You don’t see them! And why not?”
Faline told of Rolla’s escape from the wolf-dog and Geno’s subsequent peril.
Bambi listened gravely.
“And now,” he summed up when she had finished, “Boso in particular feels that you have used his mother ill.”
“Yes,” Faline agreed. “Moreover, he accused me of shielding myself behind you, of taking advantage of your position to make life miserable for Rolla.”
“He shouldn’t have said that even if he believed it,” Bambi decided. He thought for a while. “How is Rolla’s leg?”
“I think it’s all right. She limps only slightly.”
“I see.”
All of them felt uneasy, and when Bambi spoke again, it was almost as if they were startled by some stranger.
“Gurri,” Bambi said, “will you allow me to speak with your mother and Geno alone for a moment?”
Gurri immediately led Membo and Nello away.
“Faline,” Bambi continued, “Rolla undertook to be judged by me. This, then, I have to say: First, I think you have behaved wrongly. You can blame no one for the blindness of despair. You should try to patch up this difference with Rolla without delay. Second, it would have been more admirable for Geno to understand and make allowances for Boso. We are, rightly or wrongly, the first family among the roe-deer. If we cannot understand and forgive, we are not worthy of our station.”
Faline hung her head. Bambi’s voice put into clear words what her conscience had for a long time been whispering to her. She felt ashamed.
Geno said, “But, Father . . .”
“I see no necessity for argument, son. You are getting your crown. If you cannot think and act like a grownup, you do not deserve it.”
Faline cried impulsively, “You are right, of course. I have known it all along.”
“Of course you have.” Bambi nuzzled her affectionately. “Now let’s take another look at these new children of ours.”
Gurri returned with the two brothers. Faline understood the meaning of Bambi’s possessive “ours” and was happy, both for herself and for her adopted sons.
“So,” Bambi said to them, “you have been adopted by Faline. I am afraid there is nothing for it, then, except for me to adopt you too. Do you call her Mother?”
“Yes, sir,” murmured Nello.
“Then you’ll have to call me Father whether you like it or not. You see, I nearly always do what your mother wants me to.”
“Oh, sir . . .” stammered Membo.
“Oh, what?” Bambi demanded with assumed fierceness.
“Oh . . .” Poor Membo could hardly get the word out. “Oh—F-father . . . !”
“That’s it. It’s a very easy word.”
“But what a deal it means when it is said to Bambi,” said Nello proudly.
“A very pretty speech, my boy. Now, I want all three of you to come with me.”
Without a word Geno and the brothers followed him to a stout, low-branching shrub.
“Now, strip the covering from your antlers,” he ordered Geno.
Clumsily Geno tried to obey, but his efforts were without much success. Patiently, Bambi taught him. Finally, Geno found the right way.
“There,” Bambi exclaimed when the tiny horns shone clean as a fox’s tooth, “we make progress. Now, Nello and Membo, when your crowns have grown as big as Geno’s is now, act in the same way. Do not keep your antlers covered a moment longer than you need to.
“Your growing antlers,” Bambi continued, “are proof of your intimate place in the forest, for of all the things that live and grow only the trees and the deer shed their foliage each year and replace it more strongly, more magnificently, in the spring. Each year the trees grow larger and put on more leaves. And so you too increase in size and wear a larger, stronger crown.”