Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 1, 2025
"I should never have thought that the field-mouse had the impudence to come in to you. I must hear more about that. Then it's in the garden that he is?" "No," said the house-mouse. "It's not the field-mouse at all. I don't know anything about him. I have never even set eyes on him, that I know of. But, as we know, we have another big cousin, called the rat."
She had only found her way into it by mistake and so travelled across with it." "That's what you may call travelling first-class," said the wood-mouse, laughing. "One may indeed," said the house-mouse. "I should have no objection to travelling round the world in a packing-case like that. However, she was a young bride expecting her babies every day.
"Gracious!" said the house-mouse and jumped right into the air. "There's the brown rat!" And there he was. The brown rat stood and mumbled with his snout and sniffed at the dead black cousin, while keeping an eye upon the wood-mouse, who retreated a little farther still into her hole. "Good-afternoon, cousin," said the wood-mouse. "Welcome to the country.
"If they don't become proper rats soon, I will eat them without hesitation." That night, the house-mouse took a large piece of cinnamon across with her; for she had heard her young lady say that the case must be opened shortly, so she was able to calculate that the fun would soon be over. "Aren't you afraid of being discovered?" she asked the rat. "A rat is never afraid," replied the rat.
It was rolled up in a ball, with its tail wrapped about its head. I held it in the palm of my hand. It seemed almost as cold as a dead mouse, and I could not see it breathe. It was carefully put back in its blanket. Not long after this, a small house-mouse was put in the box with it. "It was the tiniest little mouse," says Miss Burt, "you ever saw.
"Well, good-bye, cousin: if you meet the field-mouse, be sure to tell him what I said. I always stand by my word. And, if you can contrive some means of letting the forester know that there's a difference between mice and mice, so much the better. You are nearer to him than we are." "Wait a little longer, cousin," said the house-mouse.
"So it was," said the house-mouse. "They would not believe it was the rats, because they had killed so many of them after the rats had bitten Jens' nose. And so it must be the mice: that went without saying.
And, in the same way, the case in which the rat arrived was hers. But go on and tell me how things went." "Things went very badly," said the house-mouse. "For four days, we lived on the fat of the land. But, on the fifth, the young mistress and the man started unpacking." "Oh!" said the wood-mouse. "Then the fun was over, I expect?" "It was, cousin," said the house-mouse.
"I ought to know, seeing that I came with it." "Did you come with the case?" cried the house-mouse, in surprise. "I did," said the rat. "I was down at the bottom when they began to pack it. It was half-dark, so they couldn't see me; and, of course, I did not make the slightest sound and did not dare to move, or else they would have discovered me and killed me.
And foxes and martens and buzzards and polecats and ermines are to be preserved for five years. It will be a fine police-force." "Yes," said the house-mouse, "there are bad times in store for all our family." They sat for a while and idled, each wrapped in her sad reflections.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking