This house had several rooms, and the Wilsons were used to having strangers come and stay with them on their way to or from the mountain. They had a mule named Belle, that had been up,—oh, I don’t know how many times,—and she could walk in the holes between the tree roots on the steep part, and over the rocky beds of the streams, without tumbling down. As soon as the lady got into the house, she asked for some milk, which she warmed over the kitchen stove, not to drink herself,—oh dear, no,—but for the poor little baby squirrel that was lying all snuggled up asleep under her belt. At first he would not drink from the spoon; it was hard and cold, and he did not know how to drink in that way. But presently he happened to get the edge of it in his mouth, and tasted the good warm milk. How he did drink it then! He held the spoon between his lips, and drank just as you drink from a tumbler; and I don’t suppose anything in the world ever tasted better to any one than that milk did to Baby Mitchell. [Illustration: LITTLE MITCHELL IN HIS LADY’S CAP “All curled up in a little round ball in his lady’s cap.” (Page 73)] Then the lady took a piece of soft cloth for a blanket, and wrapped him up in it, and took him to her bedroom, where she put him to bed, and left him while she got warm and dry and had her supper. Do you want to know about his bed? Well, you see, the mountain people use feather-beds, and they have two or three beds in one room. That is the way they like to live,—a great many people together in one room. But the lady did not like this way, so she had a room to herself, with two big beds in it, and there was a thick feather-bed on each of them. She punched her fists down into one of the feather-beds until she had made quite a deep hole, and in this she buried Little Mitchell in his blanket. 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. But it didn’t wear out Baby Mitchell. 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.