stupid and unreasonable, and entirely behind the times. To be sure,
he was always on hand at meal-times, and played a very lively tooth
on the nuts which his mother had collected, always selecting the very
best for himself; but he seasoned his nibbling with so much grumbling
and discontent, and so many severe remarks, as to give the impression
that he considered himself a peculiarly ill-used squirrel in having
to "eat their old grub," as he very unceremoniously called it.

Papa Nutcracker, on these occasions, was often fiercely indignant,
and poor little Mamma Nutcracker would shed tears, and beg her
darling to be a little more reasonable; but the young gentleman
seemed always to consider himself as the injured party.

Now nobody could tell why or wherefore Master Featherhead looked upon
himself as injured or aggrieved, since he was living in a good hole,
with plenty to eat, and without the least care or labour of his own;
but he seemed rather to value himself upon being gloomy and
dissatisfied. While his parents and brothers and sisters were
cheerfully racing up and down the branches, busy in their domestic
toils, and laying up stores for the winter, Featherhead sat gloomily
apart, declaring himself weary of existence, and feeling himself at
liberty to quarrel with everybody and everything about him. Nobody
understood him, he said;--he was a squirrel of a peculiar nature, and
needed peculiar treatment, and nobody treated him in a way that did
not grate on the finer nerves of his feelings. He had higher notions
of existence than could be bounded by that old rotten hole in a
hollow tree; he had thoughts that soared far above the miserable,
petty details of every-day life, and he could not and would not bring
down these soaring aspirations to the contemptible toil of laying up
a few chestnuts or hickory-nuts for winter.