Presently, as I remained very still, she plucked up more courage and skipped down to the grass. Here for some minutes she coquetted—there is no other word for it—she coquetted with the birds round the drinking pan. After many feints, advancing and retreating, she buried her nose in the cool, sparkling water, and took a long, long drink. Eyeing me through the veil of green which dropped round me, she suddenly made up her frisky mind to dare all and come to the nut tray close to my seat.
She rushed towards me in a tremendous hurry as if afraid of changing her mind again, her tail straight out behind her, and in two seconds was within touching distance of my hand. I kept rigid, and watched out of half-closed eyes. She stood up on her flexible hind feet and reached out a quivering, sniffling little nose in my direction, trembling all over with fear and curiosity. But as the dreaded human smell reached her moist nostrils, she turned and darted like an arrow under the shelter of a thick rhododendron. Here she hid, and I saw her bright eyes peeping out at me behind the leaves. I still remained motionless, and presently was aware of a noiseless furry form vanishing up the holly tree which leans against some of the outer branches of the beech.
The long hanging green around me shook a moment, and by that I knew that she had jumped from the holly to the beech, and was somewhere above my head. I moved imperceptibly so as to look upwards, and close above me was a little white stomach with a fiery tail cocked over a chestnut back.
And now she began to scold and stamp her feet and lash her tail; but seeing that I kept calm and moved not an eyelash, she made for the nuts, and sat up within a yard of my chair cracking and devouring them one by one.
I was immensely pleased, as this was the first time since I let her go three months ago that I had seen Mrs. Fritz so near.
There came a day at the end of June when Fritz brought a son and heir to the nuts on the stump. The stump, I must explain, was near the squirrel-house in the back garden, and was in full view of my window. The youngster was a lovely colour, almost orange, with a smart bushy tail. Fritz at this time was changing his tail, and was a lamentable object in that respect—his spiny little appendix had hardly a hair on it. I was amused at his elderly paterfamilias ways—“twizzling” his bald tail in mock anger, and carefully hiding away several nuts for future occasions. And this reminds me that I never saw him bury his nuts as the Surrey squirrels did. He preferred to hide them in the forks of the trees, or in the ivy, or in deserted birds’ nests.
I have forgotten to say that when Laurence’s mate arrived in the middle of April it was Smithers who received her, and put her into the squirrel-house in the garden, for I was spending Easter amid the deep green lanes of Devonshire.