Now we must jump forward for ten or eleven whole years. We can only guess at all the wonderful life that Mowgli led among the wolves, because writing it out it would fill very many books. He grew up with the cubs, though they, of course, were grown wolves almost before he was a child.

And Father Wolf taught him his business, and the meaning of things in the jungle, till every sound in the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every call of the owls above his head, every scratch of a bat in a tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping meant just as much to him as the work in his office means to a business man. When he was not learning he sat out in the sun and slept, and ate and went to sleep again.

When he felt dirty or hot he swam in the forest pools; and when he wanted honey (Baloo told him that honey and nuts were just as pleasant to eat as raw meat) he climbed up for it. Bagheera showed Mowgli how to climb. Bagheera would lie out on a branch and call, "Come along, Little Brother." At first Mowgli would hold on very tightly to the tree, but later he threw himself through the branches almost as bravely as the gray ape.