There, one hot spring morning, as I was lying on moss and whortleberry, under the shoulder of Mutter’s Moor, I watched a wild squirrel running up a larch. It was soon hidden from view in the tree’s delicate green branches—and what is more exquisite than the earliest green of the larch? I heard the delicious scrabble of little claws on the bark, while about me droned the big bumble-bees and their quick-working cousins of the hive, all intent on honey-getting. I was puzzled to know where the honey was to be found, till I saw that the whortleberry was full of innumerable tiny crimson bell-flowers.
It was a wonderful Easter. After “the wettest March on record” April came in hot and brilliant, with a steady east wind that dried up the saturated ground.
In every sheltered valley and “goyle” the trees rushed into leaf. The birch shook out her fairy tassels, and larches lit up the hillsides with their vivid green lace. Everywhere the busy birds flew in and out of the hedges, intent on nest-making. The rooks cawed from morning to night, the jackdaws “chucked,” and sea-gulls sailed aloft exchanging their wild free calls in the blue. It was a joy to live.
Back in Surrey again after a cold spell—“the tail of winter in the middle of May”—the icy wind dropped, and a still, hot day soothed our ruffled nerves, and warmed our shivering bodies once more. Early one morning wild Miss Tito paid me a second visit. She came to the bedroom window, and allowed me to stand close beside her, while she cracked her favourite Barcelona nuts.
When her back was turned, and her eyes shielded by her lovely tail, I gently unfastened the casement and very slowly pushed it out, holding my breath and body very still, when she quickly jerked round to see what was happening. I then backed quietly into the shadow of the room, having placed more nuts on a chair. Presently, her nut finished, and no more to be found under the inverted cocoanut in spite of her vigorous nose-pushings, her wee intelligent face peeped inside the casement, two little fore paws appeared, and then she jumped upon the chair to seize a nut—skipping outside again to crack it. I crept back into bed, and lay still. Then she came again, jumped down upon the blue carpet, and executed a sort of pas seul—pitter-patter—and back. She had not been inside my room since last September—eight months ago!
Through the autumn and winter I had scarcely seen her, even in the garden. With Tito and Tara I suppose she had been driven away by the masterful Fritz. As mentioned already, in April she had once reappeared, and had even clambered up the ivy to breakfast at the old place. But this running about in my room to-day showed that she had not forgotten the spring of 1913, when she was such a fearless little visitor that I once caught her, and put her for ten days in the squirrel-house, in a vain attempt to tame her altogether—an attempt which, as I have explained in a former book, completely failed.