utiful!" sighed my mother when at length
the Doctor stopped.

"You are a great musician, Sir," said my father, "a very great musician.
Won't you please play us something else?"

"Why certainly," said the Doctor--"Oh, but look here, I've forgotten all
about the squirrel."

"I'll show him to you," I said. "He is upstairs in my room."

So I led the Doctor to my bedroom at the top of the house and showed him
the squirrel in the packing-case filled with straw.

The animal, who had always seemed very much afraid of me--though I had
tried hard to make him feel at home, sat up at once when the Doctor came
into the room and started to chatter. The Doctor chattered back in
the same way and the squirrel when he was lifted up to have his leg
examined, appeared to be rather pleased than frightened.

I held a candle while the Doctor tied the leg up in what he called
"splints," which he made out of match-sticks with his pen-knife.

"I think you will find that his leg will get better now in a very short
time," said the Doctor closing up his bag. "Don't let him run about for
at least two weeks yet, but keep him in the open air and cover him up
with dry leaves if the nights get cool. He tells me he is rather lonely
here, all by himself, and is wondering how his wife and children are
getting on. I have assured him you are a man to be trusted; and I will
send a squirrel who lives in my garden to find out how his family are
and to bring him news of them. He must be kept cheerful at all costs.
Squirrels are naturally a very cheerful, active race. It is very hard
for them to lie still doing nothing. But you needn't worry about him. He
will be all right."

Then we went back again to the parlor and my mother and father kept him
playing the flute till after ten o'clock.

Although my parents both liked the Doctor tremendously from the first
moment that they saw him, and were very proud to have him come and play
to us (for we were really terribly poor) they did not realize then what
a truly great man he was one day to become. Of course now, when almost
everybody in the whole world has heard about Doctor Dolittle and his
books, if you were to go to that little house in Puddleby where my
father had his cobbler's shop you would see, set in the wall over
the old-fashioned door, a stone with writing on it which says: "JOHN
DOLITTLE, THE FAMOUS NATURALIST, PLAYED THE FLUTE IN THIS HOUSE IN THE
YEAR 1839."

I often look back upon that night l