“Now what do you think of that for a selfish song in these hard times?”
I laughed heartily. “Perhaps you take Squirrie too seriously. I’d like to see the little rogue. Does he live in this house of yours?”
“Yes, right up over us under the roof. He gnawed a hole through from the outside this summer, and stored an enormous quantity of nuts that he stole from good Mrs. Lacey at the corner grocery on the next street. He has an enormous place to scamper about in if he wishes to stretch his legs. He says in the corner of it he has a delightfully warm little bed-place, lined with tiny soft bits of wool and fur torn from ladies’ dresses, for he has the run of most of the bedrooms in the neighborhood. Have you seen the two old maids that live in the big attic of this house?”
“Yes, my mistress calls them the bachelor girls,” I said politely.
“Girls,” he said scornfully; “they’re more like old women. Well, anyway, they’re afraid
of mice and rats, and when Squirrie wakes up and scampers across the boards to his pantry to get a nut, and rolls it about, and gnaws it, and nibbles it, they nearly have a fit, and run to the landlady and hurry her up the three flights of stairs.
“She listens and pants, and says, ‘It must be a rat, it’s too noisy for a mouse.’ Then she goes down cellar and gets a rat-trap and props its big jaws open with a bit of cheese and sets it in a corner of the room.
“Squirrie watches them through a tiny hole in the trapdoor in the ceiling that he made to spy on them, and he nearly dies laughing, for he loves to tease people, and he hisses at them in a low voice, ‘The trap isn’t made yet that will catch me. I hope you’ll nip your own old toes in it.’”
“What very disrespectful talk,” I exclaimed.
“Oh, he doesn’t care for anybody, and the other night his dreadful wish came true, and he was so delighted that he most lost his breath and had squirrel apoplexy.”