XI
LITTLE MITCHELL GOES TO SLEEP
One day Little Mitchell’s lady said good-bye to him, and went away to stay two or three days. He had been well now for more than a week, so that she did not feel troubled at leaving him.
A friend promised to attend to him in her absence; but this was easier said than done. She opened the cage, thinking he would come and sit in her lap as he did in his lady’s.
Sit in her lap? Not a bit of it! Nor would he take any nuts from her, nor have anything to do with her. As soon as he got out of the cage, off he scampered, and she could not catch him. So she took a book and sat still, hoping he would return to his cage, in which she had laid some nuts.
Presently she heard a match snap, and looking quickly up, saw Little Mitchell drop a lighted match and scamper off.
Some one had dropped a match on the floor, and poor Little Mitchell had found it. This time he gnawed it and set it on fire, which made him quickly drop it, and thus he did not get so much of the poison as before, though he burned the whiskers all off the side of his face again. It was the same side they were burned off before, but they had grown out since then.
He went into his cage at last; but he ate scarcely anything, and was a very unhappy little fellow until his lady came back to him. You may be sure he was glad to see her! She let him out the minute she got into the room, and he climbed up and cuddled close to her face, and then ran around and around her,—for though it was hard for him to climb the stiff screen, he could climb up on his lady’s dress quite easily. He hung about her as though he could not bear to leave her for a minute, and kept this up as long as she stayed in the room.