James and Rollo did not exactly like this plan at first, but when they considered how much better the little squirrel himself would like it, they adopted it; and Rollo proposed that they should tie a string round his neck for a collar, so that they might know him again.
“I can get mother to let me have a little pink riband,” said he, “and that will be beautiful.”
“It would be a good plan,” said Jonas, “to mark him in some way, but he might gnaw off the riband.”
“O no,” said James, “he could not gnaw any thing on his own neck.” Rollo thought so too, and they both tried to bite their own collar ribands, by way of showing Jonas how impossible it was.
“I don’t know exactly what the limits are of a squirrel’s gnawing,” said Jonas. “Perhaps he might tear it off with his claws.”
“Or he might get another squirrel to gnaw it off for him,” said James.
“Yes,” said Jonas, “and there is another difficulty. He might be jumping from one tree to another, and catch his collar in some little branch, and so get hung, without judge or jury.”
“What can we do then?” said Rollo.
“I think,” said Jonas, “that the best plan would be to dye the end of his tail black. That would not hurt him any; and yet, as he always holds his tail up, we should see it, and know him.”
The boys both thought this would be excellent, and Jonas said he had some black dye, which he had made for dyeing some wood. Jonas was a very ingenious boy, and used to make little boxes, and frames, and windmills, with his penknife, in the long winter evenings, and he had made this dye out of vinegar and old nails, to dye some of his wood with.