"Oh joy!" he exclaimed, when he had looked around him for half a minute, "I see those delicious buds are beginning to sprout. Nobody can tell how I long for some fresh green food again! Nuts and acorns are all very well, but then they are terribly dry. Here goes for a leap, then!"
THE SQUIRREL.
Page 4.
So saying, the active little fellow sprang from his hole, and if you had seen him, you would have thought that no animal without wings could have ventured upon such a leap without being dashed to pieces upon the ground. But Brush had nothing to fear; for though he had no wings, he knew that his beautiful bushy tail, and his legs, stretched out straight from his body, would bear him up in the air, and prevent his falling too heavily. Then he had very strong legs for his size, especially his hind legs, and his claws were so sharp and hooked, that he could skip along the boughs, without the least danger of falling off, and he could even run up and down the perpendicular trunks of trees, almost as easily as we can walk upon the level ground.
So when Brush leaped from the entrance of his hole, instead of falling to the earth, he pitched lightly upon a bough of the tree a long way below him, and ran along it for a short distance. Then he leaped to another bough still lower, from the end of which, he very easily reached the next tree, and so on, from tree to tree, till he found himself in a well-known grove of young larches, at some distance. Here he immediately fell to work, nibbling the fresh green buds and tender bark. He sat upright, as squirrels generally do when they are eating, using his fore-feet as hands to hold his food, and very pretty he looked. But I think, that, if the gamekeeper had seen him injuring the young trees, [ 1 ] he would not have been very well pleased, and perhaps he would have put his gun to his shoulder and shot poor little Brush, if he had not received orders to the contrary. For though his master knew that the squirrels injured his young trees sometimes, he would not allow them to be killed.
This gentleman had a particular reason for protecting the squirrels in his woods. One day the gamekeeper shot a very fine one, and brought it up to the house as a present for his master's little daughter Jane, who was confined with a disease from which she never recovered. At first, the child was pleased with her new plaything, but her tender heart was pained when she saw its beautiful eyes becoming dim, and recollected that, perhaps it had left in its nest some young ones, that were perishing for want of its care. Her grief was increased by fancying that, as the animal had been killed on purpose for her, she had been the cause of its death, and though her parents said all they could to comfort her, they could hardly make her believe that she was not to blame; for when people are very ill they often have strange fancies.
Poor little Jane died a few days after, and almost the last words she spoke were, "Papa, don't let Harvey kill any more squirrels." Her father carefully attended to this request of his darling little girl—his only child—the joy of his heart—and though, like most country gentlemen, he was exceedingly angry if any person stole his game, I believe he would rather have lost fifty pheasants or hares than one squirrel. And so would I, had I been poor little Jane's papa!
But we must not forget Master Brush, who has been seated all this time in the larch-plantation, making a famous meal upon the aromatic buds and tender bark. "Ah!" said he to himself, "if those lazy creatures in the nest yonder did but know what delicious food there is here!" Then he continued munching and skipping about the trees for some time longer. But presently the weather began to change. The sun hid his glorious face behind dark clouds; a fierce easterly wind whistled through the trees; a cold driving rain came on, and winter seemed to be returned again.
"Oh, dear me," said Brush, "this will never do! I don't like this sort of thing at all! the nest is the best place I declare."