You see, young squirrels, like other babies, need to be kept warm.
So Baby Mitchell had a whole feather-bed to himself that night, and he slept without a sound until the lady unrolled him the next morning.
She hardly expected to find him alive, he was such a tender little thing to undergo such hardships. Starving, and sleeping under ladies’ belts, and being carried in that way up a rough mountain and then down again, and fed on condensed milk and cow’s milk, and put to sleep at last in a feather-bed, one would think would be enough to wear out any squirrel so young it couldn’t open its eyes.
When the lady unrolled him, there he was, as alive as could be and as warm as a kitten. She laughed when she saw him, he was so little and the bed so big!
As soon as she unrolled him, he lifted up his head, and then he opened his mouth and screamed for his breakfast. He was used to being cared for earlier in the morning, in his home in the tree, and he was starving hungry.
The lady hurried to give him some warm milk, and when he had drunk it he went fast asleep right away, and she wrapped him up and put him in the feather-bed again, and went off.
When she came back he had squirmed out of the blanket and was standing up as straight as he could on his funny little legs, and holding up his funny head, with his eyes still tight shut. And he was screaming at the top of his voice, “Oh, come and take me! come and take me!” At least that is what the lady said he meant, for the minute she put her hand on him he stopped crying.
So of course she cuddled him up against her cheek for a minute, and talked to him, and comforted him, and then gave him another drink of warm milk.
You see, she had left him until he got hungry, and then he had squirmed out to look for his lady; and when he could not find her he screamed and cried. He always did make a great fuss when he was hungry.
Little Mitchell and his lady were comfortable enough at the home of Mr. Dolph Wilson, who, you must not forget, lives at the foot of the sensible side of the great Mount Mitchell; and if you ever decide to go to the top of that mountain, that is the very best way to go. Only it will take you a long time to get to the Wilsons’ from anywhere,—almost as long as it would take to go to the moon if there were a rapid-transit trolley up there.