"Goodness! we can't have four more cats. I don't get any too much sleep as it is, and an addition of a quartette to our nightly concert is not to be thought of."
Charlie was my junior by two years, and his faith in Patrick was unshaken, so he said,
"I'm going up to see, anyhow." He thrust his hand into the hole, and pulled it out again, triumphantly shouting, "What did I tell you? Here is the"—he paused to examine his prize, and continued in a crest-fallen tone—"a young squirrel."
"Give it to me, and get the rest," I directed.
They were very young, and were queer fuzzy-looking animals. Charlie and I examined them, and then the thought struck me that we might give them to the cat in place of her lost kittens.
We ran back to the barn and placed them in the manger. Madame Puss looked puzzled for a moment, first gazing at the squirrels, then at us, as if hardly knowing what to do. But she soon decided, and with a comical purr, as if to say, "I suppose it is all right, but those children have certainly changed," she drew the squirrels toward her, and washed first one, then another, and finally went to sleep with her strange family cuddled close to her.
After that she took the best of care of her adopted children. The squirrels grew, and began to climb out of the manger and run around the barn. Madame Puss was at first distressed by this, but she soon got used to it, and seemed rather to take delight in her precocious children who could climb so much better than she could herself. Her first real trouble came when, after patient waiting, she caught a mouse and carried it to the barn in triumph.
The squirrels looked on in perfect indifference, and absolutely refused to touch the dainty morsel. Puss was surprised, but a few days later she brought in a bird; but when they paid not the slightest attention to it she was in despair. Had she, then, brought up a family which was to be of no use to the world? For a day or two she tried everything—meat, bits of fish, pieces of cold potato, until some happy inspiration led her to take them an almond which had fallen from the dinner table. After that she carried them bits of bread, corn, and nuts, until they grew large enough to come to the house themselves. Then they ranged the place from cellar to garret, dropping asleep in mother's work-basket, in father's pockets, and in bureau drawer, until they became a perfect nuisance. At last the crisis came: one of them went to sleep in father's boot, and bit his toe severely when he went to put it on; the squirrels were sent to New York to be sold, and Charlie and I each had a pair of skates from the proceeds of the sale.
