Hoping for more, I gained confidence and proceeded to explore. First I caught my claws in the little projecting tufts of the counterpane, and heard Jack laughing gently as I shook myself impatiently free, giving a little squeak of disgust. Presently I discovered a cavity that looked dark and inviting. You know a squirrel’s besetting sin is curiosity. He always wants to know the ins and outs of everything. Any object which he has not seen before fascinates him, and I am afraid to say how many of my friends have paid for their inquisitiveness by getting into serious trouble. So I crawled down, and finding it delightfully warm and dark, made my way under the clothes to the very foot of the bed, where, as I was very comfortable, I went sound asleep.
On the next morning my master turned me loose again, this time on the floor, and after a fresh access of timidity I again found nuts. There were more than I wanted, so, obeying a natural instinct, I ate what I could, and hid the rest in various convenient receptacles.
Soon I began to look forward to my daily outing, and took great delight in exploring every corner of the room. I well recollect what a shock I got the first time I reached the window-sill. Outside was a great elm-tree, whose branches reached within a few yards of the window, and the sight of the green leaves waving gently in the early morning breeze roused in me strange longings. I made one jump, and striking full against the glass, fell back half stunned and terrified almost out of my wits at the strange transparent barrier. Jack picked me up at once, and placed me safe in the darkness and warmth under the bedclothes, where I had time to recover from my fright.
Soon he took to letting me out at bedtime, and I had a grand scamper before the light was put out. The window-curtains were my favourite resort. They were so easy to climb, and had such splendid folds and crannies for hiding nuts in. I would race across the curtain-pole, rattling the rings as I went, down the other curtain, round the room full tilt, and finish up with a good hunt in all the corners for nuts which I had concealed the day before and forgotten all about. I rarely went back to my cage to sleep, though it was always open and ready for me. A fold in the window-curtain was my usual place of repose, and another pet perch was an old band-box on the top of the wardrobe. It was half full of tissue paper, which possessed a strange fascination for my young mind. I tore it all up fine with my sharp teeth, and made a most delicious nest with the bits.
When the night was chilly I generally snuggled under Jack’s bedclothes, and always, first thing in the morning, so soon as daylight came, I would make for the bed, and working my way gently down between the sheets, curl up close against Jack’s toes. Sometimes he was so sleepy that he would not wake up and play when I wanted him to; then I would emerge on to the pillow and gently nibble the tip of his nose.
This never failed. ‘Confound you, Nipper!’ (he always called me Nipper), he would mutter drowsily, and then make a lazy grab, which I always eluded with the greatest ease, and with two bounds would land on the end of the bedstead, and, perched there, scold him until he sat up and threw a sock at me.
He was never rough, and never lost his temper with me, although I am sure that I was aggravating enough at times. It must have been trying when he pulled on his boots in a hurry and found a couple of nuts wedged tight in each toe. I do not think that a boy and a squirrel ever became better chums. We were simply devoted to one another. The only dull times for me were when Jack and Harry were busy with their tutor, during which hours I was usually in my box in the bowling-alley.
There, as I think I mentioned before, the Fortescue boys kept several other pets. There was a large white cockatoo with a lemon crest, named Joey, which frightened and puzzled me horribly until I came to understand its odd faculty of imitating every person and animal about the place. It would ‘miaouw’ like a cat, a most disturbing sound, for every squirrel hates cats next to hawks and weasels; would bark so realistically that Mrs. Fortescue’s white Pomeranian was always stirred up to reply, and the two would go on and on, the wily old bird always starting up afresh whenever the dog stopped, until poor Pom nearly had a fit and grew quite hoarse. I shall never forget the first time he imitated me to my face. It gave me a most severe shock, for he did it so well that for a moment I believed that one of my relations was actually in the room. One thing I liked him for: he was devoted to Jack, and invariably bade him a grave ‘good morning’ when he brought my cage down before breakfast. He lived on a perch, to which he was chained by one leg, and up and down this he would sidle by the hour, with one eye cocked for mischief. Sometimes, when all was quiet, he would talk to himself in a language quite unlike that which my master and his family used. The boys said it was some African lingo which Joey had learnt ages ago in his native land. Altogether a most uncanny bird!
Harry had a number of pet mice in wire cages. They were not the least atom like any of the mice I had ever seen in the wood. These were of the queerest colours—piebald—and some of them had marks on their backs just the shape of a saddle. Uninteresting I called them, but Harry was very fond of them, and used to take them out and let them run all over him.
In the darkest corner of the long, low room was the one creature that, from the first moment I saw it, interested me more than all the others put together. All day long it lay hidden in its hay bed and never moved, but slept quietly as a dormouse in its winter nest. In fact, I never set eyes on it at all until one night in August, when the evenings had begun to draw in and I happened to be left a little later than usual in the bowling-alley. No sooner had the room become dusk than I heard from the tiny cage a little twittering, more like a young bird’s voice than anything else, and presently caught sight of a dainty little head poked out of the hay, with two of the largest, most liquid black eyes I ever saw. I gazed in wonder, for the animal was so like myself that I felt sure it was a squirrel, though I had never dreamed that any squirrel existed so tiny as this.