Well, when Little Mitchell went to take a sun-bath, the lady was glad, you may be sure; for then she knew he would be out of mischief for a little while. But it did not last long. He was soon up and off to see what he could do next.
He had soon collected a number of things to play with. If the lady missed any little thing, she was always sure who had run away with it. His pet plaything at this time was a little white envelope that had had a visiting-card in it. He fished the envelope out of the scrap-basket and carried it about for a long time, and then hid it away under the corner of a sofa pillow. He was always hiding his things, and the lady was always finding them in the queerest places. He used to put nuts in her slippers, and one day he even tried to drop nuts down her back. She never knew what she would find in the sleeves of her dresses when she took them out of the closet.
At last she collected all his playthings that she could find,—the little envelope, a big button, a hard cracker, a piece of cooky, a small pine-cone, three acorns, a worsted ball, and a butternut,—and put them in a little basket on the bureau. Very soon, you may be sure, Little Mitchell found them. The first thing his lady knew, he was sitting on the very corner of the bureau, with his cracker in his hands, nibbling it. Then he took a taste of the cooky; next he hauled out the little envelope, and had a joyous time hauling everything out of the basket.
What do you think he did next?
To the lady’s great astonishment, he put them all back again!
He took the greatest fancy to the little basket; and ever after, when he took his things out of it, he put at least part of them back again. He seemed to think they were safely hidden there.
He had such a hard time hiding things! All his extra nuts he wished to bury; for that is the way with the squirrel-folk, you know, and though Little Mitchell had never seen a squirrel bury anything, he could not get over wanting to do it. His favorite place, next to the folds of the lady’s dress, was the deer-skin that lay on the platform. It was a beautiful skin from his own mountains, where the deer still run wild.
But the hair on a deer is short and stiff; so there was not much chance to hide anything in it. Yet how Little Mitchell did try! He would hold in his mouth the nut to be buried, while he dug very fast indeed with his hands,—that is, he went through the motions of digging, for of course he couldn’t dig a hole in the deer-skin.