“How does Squirrie trouble the housekeepers?” I asked.
“Well, to begin with, he bothers them because he has no home duties. He is an ugly, odd, old bachelor, and never gets a mate in the spring, because no self-respecting young squirrel will take up with such a scamp.”
“Poor creature!” I said. “It is enough to make any one ugly to live alone.”
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.’
“However, any one who does wrong is always paid up for it, and Squirrie was soon caught. By this time he was so fat he could scarcely run, and he had enough nuts and hard biscuits laid up to last him for two winters. To keep down his flesh, he began to tease the dog in the lodging-house. Not in the daytime, for he did not wish to be seen. He used to chatter, chatter to Rover as he lay on the porch in the warm summer evenings, and tease him by sitting up on his hind legs and daring him to play chase. There was no cat in the house to head Squirrie off, so he would run round and round the yard and sometimes in the front door, and out the back, with old Rover loping after him, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, and his face quite silly.
“‘The dog has gone crazy,’ said the soldier’s widow one evening, as she saw Rover running about the yard and sometimes down to the old barn behind the house and back again. ‘He will have to be poisoned.’
“Rover was nearly crazy. He left the mischievous squirrel and ran to his good mistress, and put his paws on her knees, but she did not understand and pushed him away.
“I felt terribly and wondered whether I could not do something to help.”
“How did you know all this?” I interrupted. “You would be in bed dark evenings.”
“Why surely you know,” said Chummy, “that all birds of the day tell their news to the birds of the night—to owls, to bats, and even to some insects. Then, in turn, we get the news of the night. I had a very smart young screech-owl watching Squirrie for me.”
“Yes, yes,” I said hurriedly. “We cage birds are more handicapped than you wild ones. I know, though, about the bird exchange. I’ve heard the old birds say that they have even had to depend on cockroaches sometimes for items of news, when they couldn’t get about themselves.”
“Well,” continued Chummy, “I made up my mind something had to be done to enlighten the soldier’s widow, so the next morning I just hovered round and gave up all thought of breakfast for myself, though of course I rose extra early, and fed the young ones before my mate got up.
“I watched the soldier’s widow when she took the bottle of milk from the refrigerator and put it on the pantry shelf. I watched her when she poured some in a little pitcher and put it on the dining-room table. I still kept my eye on her when she went to the back door to speak to the vegetable man, but after that I watched Squirrie.
“The little beast was darting into the dining-room. He went straight for the milk pitcher and holding on the edge with his paws, he ran his head away down into it, to get a good long drink.
“I lighted on the window sill and gave a loud squawk. The soldier’s widow turned round, looked past me, and saw Squirrie with his head in the milk pitcher. She gave a loud and joyful squeal, dropped the cabbage she was holding and ran in the room, just in time to see Squirrie with a very milky face darting out the other door to the front of the house.
“Oh, how happy she was! It had all come over her in a flash what a goose she had been not to have guessed it was a squirrel that was defrauding her. She ran up to the student’s room to tell him the good news, and he went to the window and shook his fist at Squirrie and called him the red plague.”
“What did Squirrie say?” I asked.
“Squirrie said, ‘I don’t care,’ and instead of hiding from them, as he had always done before, he came boldly out on a branch, and licked his milky paws. Then he moved six doors down the street to a house where two maiden ladies lived. They have gone away now, but they kept a small tea-room and sold cake and candy. Squirrie went creeping round them, and they thought it was cute to have a little pet, so they used to put nuts for him on their windows.”
“Didn’t they know what mischief he had done at the corner?” I asked.
“No—you young things don’t know how it is in a city. No one knows or cares who lives near by. In the nice, kind country you know everyone for miles round. Well, Squirrie got so familiar with these ladies that he used to sleep in the house and tease the family cat. He didn’t do much mischief at first. He knew he was in a good place, but one day just before Easter, Satan entered into him, and he played the poor ladies a very scurvy trick.
“They had been getting their baskets all ready for Easter sales, and had them in rows on a big table—such cute-looking little Japanese baskets, they were, all red and yellow and filled with layers of nuts and candy.
“This day both ladies went downtown to buy more things for more baskets, and Squirrie got into the room and began playing with those that were finished. I saw him through the window, but what could I do? When I chirped to him that he was a bad beast to spoil the work of the two ladies who had been so good to him, he chattered his teeth and made a face