Lydia Maria Child, Isaac T. Hopper: a true life

[20] and scampered off through the bushes. In about fifteen minutes, she returned and took one of the young ones in her mouth, and carried it quickly to a hole in another tree, three or four hundred yards off, and then came back and took the others, one by one, till she had conveyed them all to their new home. The intelligent instinct manifested by this little quadruped excited great interest in Isaac's observing mind. When he drove the cows to pasture, he always went by that tree, to see how the young family were getting along. In a short time, they were running all over the tree with their careful mother, eating acorns under the shady boughs, entirely unconscious of the perils through which they had passed in infancy.

Some time after, Isaac traded with another boy for a squirrel taken from the nest before its eyes were open. He made a bed of moss for it, and fed it very tenderly. At first, he was afraid it would not live; but it seemed healthy, though it never grew so large as other squirrels. He did not put it in a cage; for he said to himself that a creature made to frisk about in the green woods could not be happy shut up in a box. This pretty little animal became so much attached to her kind-hearted protector, that she would run about after him, and come like a kitten whenever he called her. While he was gone to school, she frequently ran off to the woods and played