that Frisky had always liked before. But now nothing tasted the same.
Frisky never felt really hungry. He just sat in his cage and moped and
sulked.

Once in a great while he would go out into his wheel, and run and run
until he was so tired that he was ready to drop. Whenever Johnnie
Green saw him running inside the wheel that young man would laugh
aloud--he was so pleased.

But nothing ever pleased Frisky Squirrel any more. He grew peevish and
cross and sulky. Being cooped up in that little wire prison day after
day made an entirely different squirrel of him. He longed to be free
once more--free to scamper through the tree-tops, and along the
stone-walls and the rail-fences. And at night he dreamed of hunting for
beechnuts, and chestnuts, and hickorynuts, on which he would feast to
his heart's content--in his dreams. But in the daytime, when his young
master put some of those very same nuts into his cage, Frisky would
hardly touch them. He lost his plumpness. His smooth coat grew rough.
And his tail--that beautiful tail that Jimmy Rabbit had tried to cut
off--alas! it was no longer beautiful. It was thin and ragged-looking.

At last Johnnie Green began to be worried about his pet squirrel. And
one day when Frisky refused to eat a single nut Johnnie Green thought
that he must be really ill. So he opened the door of the cage, which
he always kept carefully fastened, and forgetting all about his thick
gloves he put his hand inside the little wire house, picked Frisky up
by the back of his neck, just as if he were a kitten, and lifted him
out of his prison.

Johnnie wanted to see if he could find out what was the trouble with