Little Mitchell: The Story of a Mountain Squirrel

by Margaret Warner Morley

The rubbing seemed to help the little legs, but it did not give them strength; and soon Little Mitchell could not climb his screen at all. He could climb up the table-cover, though, to the table, where he loved to poke around among the books and papers,—and I am sorry to say he would sometimes gnaw at a book-cover unless he were watched.

He could climb up the lady’s dress, too, quite easily, and get into her lap, where he loved to lie stretched out. And he could climb up the dresses that hung in the closet. The best thing there was the woolly wrapper; he used to climb up to the hook it hung on, and sit there, and after a while slip into the top of the sleeve and take a nap.

One day his lady hung the cuff of the sleeve on another hook, and so made a fine hammock for him to creep into. He lay there a long while, having the most beautiful time,—and what do you suppose he was doing? He was pulling the fuzz all off the inside of the sleeve! He did not gnaw the cloth at all,—he just amused himself pulling off the fuzz and rolling it into balls.

As Little Mitchell became weaker, he would often lie in his little hammock in the closet half a day at a time. And when, finally, he got to be too weak to climb even the woolly wrapper, the lady would lift him up and put him into the sleeve, and he would stay there until he wanted to come out, when he would get up on the hook from which the wrapper hung, and wait for the lady to take him down. He was very much afraid of falling; so he did not try to climb much. He did fall once in a while, and it seemed to hurt him dreadfully.

But though he had become so weak, he was not at all stupid. Even in his nest in the dark sleeve, he knew when the lady came into the closet. I suppose it was that wonderful nose of his that told him. It did not disturb him to have her come, even when she brushed against him. It did not seem even to wake him up.

But one day a friend of the lady went into the big closet for something, and passed Little Mitchell as he lay asleep in his hammock. She did not touch him at all; but his quick little nose must have smelled a stranger, and how he did growl and scold at her! She did not know what it was at first, and jumped out of the closet as though a bear had been in there.

Little Mitchell seldom sat in his little chair in those days; but the day when Margaret and George and the baby came to see him, the lady set him in his chair before his table and gave him a nut.

You should have seen the children,—how pleased they were! George had the jolliest laugh you ever heard; and he was the jolliest boy, anyway. But he was careful about laughing out loud, for fear of scaring Little Mitchell; and Margaret was careful too. Even the baby was used to playing with the kitten without hurting it; so that Little Mitchell was perfectly safe with those dear little children, if he had only known it. But he didn’t know it,—and you remember how he felt about children.