It was very interesting and amusing to watch Ruby as she became more and more used to seeing me about. I would open the casement into the squirrel cage, and go back to bed and watch. This cage was built on to the wall outside my window; it was five or six feet high, and about three feet broad, with a good wooden floor, and what made it delightfully home-like for squirrels was that an evergreen shrub grew inside against the wall right up to the eaves. Ruby would clamber down the central pole, which, with perches nailed upon it, made a capital substitute for a tree trunk, and would come peeping round the casement, to look for nuts which would be on a chair, or on the tall clothes-basket near by. Her little pointed ears, with their pretty tufts, would be sharply cocked, her whiskers quivering nervously, and her tail erect but turned back at the tip in the form of a query. Then as I made no sign of movement she would gain confidence, and venture farther in. When she got a nut and sat up to eat it, breaking the shell so cleverly in two halves, and keeping one half in her paws as a little cup, while nibbling it her ears would come close together, and her tail would curl comfortably right over her dainty little head. She was a charming picture as she sat up, showing her snow-white waistcoat, holding her food between her wee thumbs, her little jaws going like lightning, her brilliant eyes keeping a sharp lookout towards my part of the room—ready to vanish in a second should I dare to move.
And then would come another nervous and anxious little face; this was Peter, hoping that there would be something left for him. But Ruby would scold and grumble; and he, silently withdrawing, would wait till her ladyship had finished.
