‘Did you observe how small and slender they are, with small heads and pointed noses, and such bright eyes? The colour of their fur is reddish brown, and they have such a long bushy tail. The squirrel makes two nests, a summer nest and a winter nest. In the latter, which is very strongly built, and thick and warm, it rolls itself up and lies asleep through much of the winter time. The squirrel’s summer nest, on the contrary, is light and airy, and it is made near the end of a bough, so that it swings about with the wind, and rocks like “the cradle on the tree-top,” and there the mother-squirrel has her little ones: but if any one should try and climb the tree, she takes her little ones, one by one, in her mouth, and leaps from branch to branch and from tree to tree, till she is sure they are safe; but when the danger has passed, she takes them back again to her nest in the same manner.’
‘How clever of the squirrel! I should like to see a squirrel jumping with a little squirrel in its mouth. May we go again to the wood? perhaps we may see the pretty squirrels again.’
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SHIPWRECK—THE PARROT.
ONE evening there was a great storm, although it was not autumn yet, which is the time for storms. The wind had been very high all the morning, and had become louder and more stormy as the day went by; and just before the children were going to bed, their grandmamma told them that she was very anxious, for such a stormy night would be, without doubt, dangerous to many ships now at sea.
The noise of the wind was very great, and the doors and windows rattled and shook, and Alice asked—
‘Is that loud noise the sea that we hear, grandmamma?’ And her grandmamma told her it was; and when they listened they heard the roar of the waves as they broke upon the shore, and they thought that they even heard the shingle rolling back with the heavy waves.