More than an hour was spent in this breathless chase, till some one bethought her of a tiny room across the vestibule. Setting the door open, the frightened little beast was at length chased into this, and the door shut. A model’s cloak was flung over the runaway and twisted round the struggling bundle, which was transferred to its future home.
The ladies of the studio were great admirers of Mr. Laurence Housman, so the new arrival was named after him by common consent.
Laurence spent the following four and a half months (from the beginning of November till the middle of March) in a cage about three feet by two, which was fastened against a chimney-pot on the roof.
I have often wondered what his nights were like, with London cats all round.
He was furnished with a sleeping-box, with a hinged lid. I once saw him asleep, as my friend opened the top. Anything neater and warmer could not well be imagined. Wood-wool was tightly wedged round the inside of the box first, then came a thick layer of cotton-wool, all of which he had arranged himself. In the middle, a curled red centre, lay the squirrel fast asleep, his face completely hidden. The box lid fitted tightly down over this compact mass, and the two little holes at either end, through which he crept in and out, were so small, I wondered how he could get any air at all.
When I went away for the Christmas week of 1913, I could not leave Peter and Rufina the run of my bedroom. The house being shut up and empty, with no one to see after them, they would have made hay of all my possessions. So I hung the sleeping-bag on a nail on the wall inside the cage, and shut and bolted the window, giving Smithers, the gardener, instructions to feed them and replenish the water-jar from outside; this he was accustomed to do by means of a ladder. He told me that Rufina sometimes jumped out of the bag when he put his hand in to scatter nuts; so poor Peter must have been forced to give up even this pet hiding-place.
When I returned from Devonshire on 1st January, both squirrels were invisible. As the weather was bitterly cold, I was a little anxious when night came on lest their jar of water should be frozen; so I opened the window, and, finding a solid block of ice, I took the vessel in and replenished it. I mention this, as I fancy my action was the cause of the tragedy which followed. The casement opened backwards upon the inner wall of the cage, against which, upon a nail, hung the blue cloth bag I have spoken of. The casement would just touch this bag and shake it, though it was protected a little by a branch of the shrub which grew up through the cage.
