putterings 148 < 149 > 150 index
Not at all.
“...At first Squirrel Hotel was just a series of bare rooms and, as I soon found out, rather poorly planned.”
“Did the squirrels dislike the floor plans?”
“They seemed to, and with apparent good reason. The air didn’t circulate too well. They chewed new doors through several of the partitions and a couple of new windows through the walls. My first job was to square off these holes and make them like the other windows and doors. The squirrels didn’t seem to have much of an eye for décor.”
“Did they mind your puttering around their building?”
“Not at all. They seemed to know I was their friend. I next got a few chairs to put in the rooms — tables too — and I put beds in the bedrooms. I knew they wouldn’t use most of the furniture, but I thought it would improve the look of the place.
—
ex William Pène du Bois, “The Third Day,” in Squirrel Hotel (1952) : 36
a 1980 (Gregg Press, Boston) reissue borrowable at archive.org
archive.org (opens to same page
“The story originally appeared in Mademoiselle.”
“A young reporter recounts his brief friendship with an extraordinary man who built the Squirrel Hotel and conducted the Bee Orchestra.”
William Pène du Bois (1916-1998),
wikipedia