“Well,” said the squirrel, “my summer-house is constructed on the same principle. I will show it you, if you like, for I really can’t sit still any longer. Just look at my tail! It will whisk itself off soon if I don’t jump about.”
“Oh, I should so like to see it, Mr. Squirrel!” cried Tommy Smith. “Yes, do come down, and”—
“Oh, I’m not coming down,” said the squirrel. “I shouldn’t think of doing that. I shall go home by the treeway, and you can walk underneath me. Now then!” And as the squirrel said this, he gave his tail such a whisking, and away he ran along the branch he had been sitting on, right to the end of it, and then gave such a jump on to the branch of another tree, and then out of that tree into another one, and so from tree to tree, so fast that Tommy Smith could hardly keep up with him as he ran along the ground underneath.
It was not always that the squirrel had to jump from one tree to another, because their branches often touched each other, and then he would run along them without jumping at all. Sometimes they would be very near together without quite touching, and then when he came to the end of the branch he was on, he would lean forward, and, with his little fore-paws, catch hold of the tips of several of those belonging to another tree, and draw them all together, and then give a little spring amongst them, and away he would go again. This was when he was in the fir trees. But to see him run down the long, drooping branch of a beech tree, right to the very end, and then drop off it on to another one far below—that was the finest sight of all. He did it so very gracefully. His tail was not turned up over his back now, as it had been whilst he was sitting up, but went streaming out behind him like a flag. And sometimes he would whisk it from side to side, and say, “Sug, sug,—sug, sug,—sug, sug, sug, sug, sug!”
“Here it is!” cried the squirrel at last, from one of the very top branches of the tree he was on (it was a large beech tree). “Here is ‘Tree-tops.’ Can you see it?”
“Oh yes, I can see the top of the tree you are on,” said Tommy Smith; “but”—
“Oh, I don’t mean that!” said the squirrel. “‘Tree-tops’ is the name of my residence. You know, houses have usually a name of some sort. So I call mine ‘Tree-tops.’ That describes it very well, because it is in a tree-top, and there are tree-tops all round it.”
“But aren’t all squirrels’ nests like that?” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh yes,” said the squirrel; “and they can all be called ‘Tree-tops.’ I daresay you’ve seen more than one house that was named ‘The Elms,’ or ‘The Firs,’ or ‘The Beeches.’ But now look about, and see if you can see my summer-house.”