"There!" she said, laughing, "come see, children, what I have found! Here is the squirrel's nest, and two of her little babies!"
The girls peered eagerly through the hole at these newly discovered treasures.
"The darlings!" cried Bessie, "we can surely tame these little creatures, mother, they are so young. It will be no trouble at all."
"We must not take them from the nest," replied her mother. "If we can tame them by kindness, and by gradually accustoming them to our harmless visits, I am very willing to make pets of them."
"Oh, how pleasant that will be," exclaimed Bessie, in an ecstasy. "Do look, Nelly, at their pretty eyes. I don't know but that I shall be just as well satisfied with my two little squirrels as you are with your two lambs."
As she spoke, she put in her hand to touch the tiny animals on the head, and smooth them softly, but something at the side of the nest suddenly arrested her attention, and she did not do so.
"Oh, mother," she cried, "I do believe here is my Madeira nut, among this rubbish and empty hickory shells about the nest. I do believe it,—I do believe it! It looks like it, I am positive of that. It seems whole, too. I don't think it has been nibbled at all! How glad I am!"
"Can you reach it?" asked her mother; "if you can, do so."
Bessie made what she called "a long arm," and in a moment more she seized the nut and brought it into open daylight.
"Oh, mother," she said, dancing around the garret joyfully, "it is my nut! Here is a little place in the side where the squirrel has bitten, and you can see the money right through it! She found that there was nothing good to eat in it, so she stopped just in time not to spoil it entirely. I am so glad—I am so glad!"