Chummy went on: “Squirrie has been two years only in this neighborhood. He never stays long anywhere, for his bad deeds make
enemies for him, and he is driven away. When he first came here he lived in Snug Hollow, that big hole in the half-dead elm at the corner. Just opposite the tree is a lodging-house. You can see it from here, that one with the upper verandas. It is kept by a soldier’s widow, and she is rather poor. She could not afford to put in window screens, and Squirrie had a royal time with one of her lodgers, a young student up in the third story. He was very odd, and would eat no meat. He lived on nuts, cheese, fruit, eggs, and bread—just the things Squirrie likes. So he made up his mind to board with the student. The young man was a fresh-air fiend, and never closed his windows. This just suited Squirrie, so whenever this young Dolliver went over to the University, Squirrie would spring from a tree branch to the roof, and was down on the veranda and into the room in a trice. He rarely ate anything on the spot. He carried everything away to his hole in the tree, so the student thought that the maid who did his room must be stealing his things.
“He questioned her, but she said she knew nothing about his food. Then he locked the chest of drawers where he kept his supplies.
Squirrie climbed up the back, enlarged a knothole and went in that way. The student thought the girl must have a key. So he went to the landlady. She dismissed the maid and got another, but the student’s things went faster than ever.
“The next thing was that the student lost his temper and told the soldier’s widow that she would do well to feed her maid better, and she told him that if he didn’t like her house he could get out.
“However, she sent this second girl away and got another. It was the same old story—nuts, fruit, cheese, bread still vanished. Then the student got in a worse temper, and turned all the clothes out of his trunk and made that his pantry, and carried the key in his pocket.
“Now he lost nothing, for Squirrie, clever as he was, could not get in a locked trunk. He was up a tree, indeed, but he was clever enough to find a way down. The soldier’s widow was his next victim, and he would watch the windows and see where she was, and often when her back was turned he would dart in the house, seize some bit of food, and run away with it.
“‘Now,’ said the soldier’s widow, ‘this last
girl is dishonest, too. She can’t get into the student’s trunk, and she has turned against me.’ So she sent her away, though the girl cried and said she was well brought up, and would not steal a pin.
“By this time the house had such a bad name among maids that the soldier’s widow could not get another, and she had too much work to do and became thin and miserable, and still the stealing went on, till at last she said, ‘I must be a thief myself, and don’t know it.’