Chapter XX: Housekeeping

Minnie gladly followed the mouse into his hole. To see some one who had been in her dear lost home, was almost as good as to feel her mother's gentle hand laid on her head once more.

In the promised news she was disappointed! Alas! the mouse disappointed her in many things. Minnie had not lived with him long before she found that she had fallen into bad company.

He was good-natured and hospitable in his way, but a sad thief, and his word could never be depended upon. The little girl even felt afraid of her own safety, when she saw what pleasure mouse took in betraying all who trusted in him.

The first time she fell asleep, the mischievous fellow nibbled off what rags were left of her gown, to make a bed for his young. Minnie feared that next he might pick out her eyes for their luncheon, and determined to leave him before it should be too late.

But it seemed as if the sly mouse saw into her mind, for, as she was composing her farewell speech, he came running out in the grass where she had seated herself, and said, in his squeaking voice, "Minnie, will you do me a great favor?"

"I shall be glad to do anything in my power," was the reply.

"Well, you didn't seem satisfied with the news I brought from home, and so I have resolved to go and try if I cannot pick up some more."

"I suppose you won't pick up any of my mother's cheese and pie-crust?" said Minnie, laughing.

"Of course not; at least, not more than enough to pay for my trouble in going. And now, Minnie dear, I want you to take care of my little ones while I'm gone,--to feed them, and see that they don't roll out of their nest."

"That I will do very willingly."

Mouse scampered away, and Minnie little thought how long it would be before she should see him again.

The nest was narrower, deeper, and darker, than squirrel's, and quite as close and disorderly. It was hard for Minnie to crowd herself through the entrance; but, once within, she found paths winding in every direction, some of them ending in little chambers. Part of these rooms were store-houses of grain, cheese, and all manner of rubbish, which mouse must have stolen for the pleasure of stealing, Minnie thought, it was so wholly useless. The other rooms had each its brood of little mice, of all sizes and ages, some almost as large as the mother, some not much larger than a fly.

It took the whole afternoon to wander from one room to another, explaining where the mother had gone, comforting those that began to fret, feeding the hungry, quieting the quarrelsome. Glad enough was Minnie when she had tucked up the last brood in their bed of wool, and could creep out into the grass for a breath of air and a look at the pleasant sky.

Shaking the earth from her cloak of humming-bird feathers, and picking a handful of checkerberries, Minnie looked about for a stone to sit upon while she ate her supper.

She soon found one, smooth as any pebble in the brook. Here she could eat at her leisure, while a band of crickets and katydids played to her, and all the beautiful stars twinkled over her head, and all the grass about her was strung with glistening drops of dew.

"After all," she thought, "this is more to my taste than being shut up in my curtained bed at home. What's the use in stars and dew, if we never look at them? What use is there in the evening breeze, if we shut it out with our windows? It's a good thing to have our own way, and I may yet be glad that I left my father's house."