FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS.
It will be remembered that I had obtained another squirrel as a mate for Laurence when he should leave London and come to Hook Heath and freedom. This little creature had arrived on the thirteenth of January; had been kept in the conservatory while the bitter weather lasted; and had been put into the garden squirrel-house on the twenty-eighth of the month. I called her Sulky at first, for she remained so implacably invisible; and, though food disappeared, I never caught a glimpse of her for a fortnight. She was, as I have said, intended to be a mate for Laurence; but after Ruby’s death I felt she must be given to Fritz, and I must get another little lady for Laurence. So, the day after my little pets died, I opened the door of the squirrel-house, and let the captive free to go where she would.
I had reason to believe, however, that for a week she sneaked back to the squirrel-house every night to sleep; for nuts put in overnight were gone before 7 a.m., and one morning I saw her slipping down from the sleeping-box to make her breakfast.
I watched her afterwards get out and run along the fence, and then think better of it, and come back and climb up to have another nap.
By midday, however, she was gone, nor did I see her again for more than a fortnight. We had some very stormy weather, with high gales and snow squalls, and I began to fear that she had got a chill and would die of pneumonia, like poor little Rufina.
How should we ever know? She would creep into one of the deserted nests in the wood, and there gasp out her little life as the two others had done.
The only thing that gave me hope that she was alive and well, though unseen, was Fritz’s cheerful behaviour, and the fact of his still remaining in the wood and garden. For it was springtime, and surely, if there had not been some attraction here, he would have been off to the plantations across the heath, where there were plenty of little ladies to be courted. His demeanour when he paid visits to my room—which he did every day—was suggestive of happiness and of amorous thoughts. He would cock his tail roguishly, and skip about and run up the curtains—plainly “showing off.”
