He had managed to crawl out of his blanket, and no doubt he felt very lonely and tired and hungry, so he started out to find his lady. He had scrambled down to the floor, and gone across the room, and climbed upon a low couch under the window; and on the pillow of the couch was lying his lady’s cap, where she had left it a few minutes before. And here she found him, all curled up into a little round ball on the top of her cap. He must have smelled it, and gone there.
So the lady said, “It is time now for you to have a room of your own, where you cannot get lost.”
Then she took the cotton that her friend, the gentleman’s wife, had given her, and put it into the box that her friend the gentleman had bored full of holes, and made a soft bed for Baby Mitchell. Then she gave him a good supper of warm milk, and put him to bed in his box, and he went fast asleep and slept soundly until the next morning.
After breakfast next day the lady put Baby Mitchell on the couch while she fixed his box, and when she went to take him,—what do you think? He had one round black eye wide open! He didn’t seem to know he had an open eye, though, and went nosing about just as he did when he had no eye at all.
Next day open came the other round black eye, and then all at once Baby Mitchell seemed to be able to see. And if you will believe it, he was now afraid of his lady! He probably had not expected to open his eyes on a lady instead of on a furry little bunny mother; and so he was as badly frightened as though he had never licked condensed milk from her finger, nor been taken care of by her through more than half of his short life.
Little Mitchell’s First Chestnut
“He took it in his baby hands, and sat up, and looked around, very wise indeed.” (Page [113])