Page:The New-Year's Bargain (1884).djvu/185

 nuts on it. But the most famous lecture of all was announced to be 'for ladies only' and its subject was 'The Wrongs of Squirrelesses.'

"Nippy told her audience (which they had not known before) that they had always been abused and unhappy. She reminded them with great eloquence how the largest nuts were apt to fall to the lot of the male squirrels, who were usually up and at work early of mornings, while their wives slept; how fathers of families were apt to go sky-larking off into the woods, leaving their partners at home with nests full of little ones; how they came back late at night and disturbed the house; and many other things. So pathetic was the picture that, before the lecture ended, most of the company were in tears. The gentlemen, who had been sitting in distant trees meanwhile, trying to look as if they didn't know that any thing was going on, but secretly wild with curiosity, were confounded when, at the end of the discourse, all the squirrelesses came trooping home slowly and sadly, with tails in