66 THE SQUIRRELS THAT LIVE IN A HOUSE. 



have delightful ways of being warm and comfortable in 

 winter." 



So Mr. and Mrs. Red set up housekeeping in the cottage, 

 and had no end of nuts and other good things stored up 

 there. The trouble of all this was, that, as Mrs. Red was 

 a notable body, and got up to begin her housekeeping 

 operations, and woke up all her children, at four o'clock 

 in the morning, the good people often were disturbed by a 

 great rattling and fuss in the walls, while yet it seemed 

 dark night. Then sometimes, too, I grieve to say, Mrs. 

 Squirrel would give her husband vigorous curtain lectures 

 in the night, which made him so indignant that he would 

 rattle off to another quarter of the garret to sleep by him- 

 self; and all this broke the rest of the worthy people who 

 built the house. 



What is to be done about this we don't know. What 

 would you do about it ? Would you let the squirrels live 

 in your house, or not ? When our good people come down 

 of a cold winter morning, and see the squirrels dancing and 

 frisking down the trees, and chasing each other so merrily 

 over the garden-chair between them, or sitting with their 

 tails saucily over their backs, they look so jolly and jaunty 

 and pretty that they almost forgive them for disturbing 

 their night's rest, and think that they will not do anything 

 to drive them out of the garret to-day. And so it goes 

 on ; but how long the squirrels will rent the cottage in this 

 fashion, I 'm sure I dare not undertake to say. 



