The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories Part 23

"Not so early in the morning, cousin," she said. "In an hour or two you will be welcome, if you dare go out then and risk meeting the cat. But the rooms haven't been done yet. I know how neat and particular you house-mice are, so I should be ashamed to show you my home before it's quite clean and tidy. I should prefer you to wait until the winter's over, when I have had my spring-cleaning."

"Oh, very well!" said the house-mouse. "Then we'll stay here, though it's horribly cold sitting on one's bare tail in the snow. As I said, I only wanted to talk to you a bit. It's about the family. I don't know if you have heard that a cousin of ours has arrived from Copenhagen?"

"No, I haven't," said the wood-mouse. "What's he called? Is he a smart fellow?"

"She's called the brown rat. It's a she," replied the house-mouse. "And she really was very smart at first. She came in the packing-case in which we get our groceries every year from the shop in Copenhagen. It is a great big case, full of the most delicious things you can think of.

She had only found her way into it by mistake and so travelled across with it."

"That's what you may call travelling first-cla.s.s," 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. She therefore at once made herself a home in the barn; and the children arrived four days after."

"Oh, yes!" said the wood-mouse. "There are always plenty of children and there are always more and more coming."

"That is so," said the house-mouse. "But now hear how things went. At first, Cousin Rat was extremely amiable. She treated me to sugar and cinnamon and flour and sugar-candy and so forth during the whole of the four days. You must know that she had gnawed herself out of the case, which stood in the barn waiting to be unpacked. Well, I accepted her invitation and ate away. Wouldn't you have done the same?"

"Certainly," said the wood-mouse. "One must never offend people by declining a kind offer. And when it happens to be a cousin ... and the goods are hers...."

"Well, they weren't exactly," said the house-mouse. "The case really belonged to the forester."

"According to that, nothing is ours," said the wood-mouse. "I work it out differently. I say that the mast and nuts out here are mine. And the larder in the forester's house is yours. 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. "But that would have been all.

Nothing lasts for ever in this world: not even a chest of groceries from Copenhagen, though it was the biggest I ever saw and simply bursting with good things. But, when they discovered that some one had been at it, they were angry; and we all got blamed for it, you see."

"And it was the rat who did it," said the wood-mouse. "That was really hard on you."

"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. To judge by what I have heard them talk about since, the young mistress stood up for me as long as she could, but the forester and his man both said that, with mice and rats, it was six of one and half-a-dozen of the other."

"Yes, that's the worst of it," said the wood-mouse. "It's just as with me and the field-mouse. We have to suffer for our relations' misdeeds.

Well ... and didn't your mistress find out how things stood?"

"She did not," said the wood-mouse. "Taken all round, things went about as badly as they could with me. You see, I had heard them say that the case was to be unpacked. And then there was some nice cinnamon, which I am so fond of. So, on the last night, I resolved to drag a piece over to my place, so as to have a bit to spare. I did so and managed to get it through the drain all right. But then it was so big that I had a difficulty in dragging it any farther. So I nibbled it into two pieces.

One of these I got right down into my hole and the other just up to the hole. But then the door slammed and I was frightened and dropped the cinnamon and ran away."

"Well, you fetched it afterwards, I suppose?" asked the wood-mouse. "You said it was lying outside the hole."

"So it was," said the house-mouse. "But now I'll tell you how badly things went. When I got down into the hole, I fell asleep. I don't know how it is, but cinnamon always makes me so beautifully sleepy. And then I have the most wonderful dreams about bacon and the very nicest things I can think of. So I fell asleep and slept and slept and dreamt beautifully. When I awoke at last, it was broad daylight, as I saw the moment I put my nose outside the hole. The cinnamon was there all right.

But the mistress was in the room, so I dared not take it. And, when she went out into the kitchen, she left the door open, a thing she never does as a rule. And, all the time, she was walking up and down. And then they began to unpack the case and she put the things away in the cupboard and the sideboard. And then she suddenly stopped in front of my hole, where the cinnamon was, you know, and then, of course, I was found out. She was very much distressed at my deceit, as she called it, and said that she had done with me and would never give me any more sugar.

And, since that day, I have not had a single lump. It's a terrible loss to me."

"So it is," said the wood-mouse. "But what can you do? You can't explain the thing to her, you know."

"No," said the house-mouse. "I can't do that. And now the rat-catcher has been and a new cat has come, who is a regular demon at her business.

It's a perfect miracle that I have escaped so far. I half wish I were dead. The good days in the forester's house are over; and they won't come back either. It's hard, when one was looking forward to having a fairly comfortable time in one's old age."

"Oh, you needn't think it's much better out here!" said the wood-mouse.

"There's a new young forester come; and he's a terror!"

"I know," said the house-mouse. "He came down with the rat-catcher. Jens fetched them at the station."

"But the rat-catcher went back again," said the wood-mouse. "The young forester stayed here and is still here; and I don't expect he will ever go. He intends to grapple seriously with the mouse-plague, as he calls it, meaning the field-mouse. The mast and acorns are being gathered earlier than usual, so that we may starve to death. He wants to let cats loose in the woods, I heard him say. And owls are to be imported, as if there were not enough of them before! 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. The house-mouse felt horribly cold, because of her bare tail, and the wood-mouse wished her cousin would go away, so that she might run down to her warm nest.

"Tell me," said the wood-mouse. "How is our cousin from Copenhagen doing over in the barn? Haven't you talked to her?"

"No, I haven't," said the house-mouse. "She was particularly friendly when we had the packing-case: indeed, she even asked me down to see her rooms. But she warned me not to come over there otherwise. She said that I might run the risk of her eating me. She and some other brown rats once ate a kitten, she said. And I could see by the look on her face that it was true."

"Oh dear, oh dear!" said the wood-mouse. "But perhaps the rat-catcher or the new cat has caught her?"

"No," said the house-mouse. "She escaped; and so did most of her children. And they have multiplied in such a way that you simply can't turn for rats, Jens says."

"Then, you'll see, they will forget you all right," said the wood-mouse, "if only you are careful and discreet."

"Jens will forget me, perhaps," said the house-mouse, sadly. "But the mistress will never forget me, because she believes I deceived her. And the new cat has set eyes on my hole and she is on the look-out. Some day, sooner or later, I shall be eaten up."

"Yes, it's awfully sad," said the wood-mouse. "But what can one do...?

Hullo, who's coming now?"

The house-mouse turned round and looked in the same direction as the wood-mouse. A black animal came running over the snow.

"I positively believe it is our cousin the black rat," said the house-mouse. "I didn't think there were any of them left. Yes, there's no doubt about it, it's the black rat."

"Good afternoon, cousin," said the wood-mouse and backed down into her hole until only her nose peeped out. "Welcome to the country. This is the first time, so far as I know, that I have had the pleasure of seeing you out here. You don't care much for nature, I believe."

"Give me food! Give me food!" screamed the black rat.

"I'm awfully sorry that you are hungry," said the wood-mouse.

"Unfortunately I have just eaten my last nut. As you see, here's the sh.e.l.l. The house-mouse had been downstairs calling on me and can bear witness that there's not a bite or a sup to be found in my place."

She winked at the house-mouse to confirm the truth of her fib. But the house-mouse could not take her eyes off the black rat, who had lain down in the snow and was moaning piteously:

"You're catching cold, cousin," she said kindly. "You had better go back to the barn again. It's warmer there."

"I really don't care what becomes of me," said the rat. "To tell you the truth, it's all the same to me whether I die in one way or another. You say I ought to go back to the barn. That's where I've come from. There's no existing there for those loathsome rats from Copenhagen. They call themselves rats, but I don't believe that they are rats at all. I am sure they're a sort of fish by the way they swim. And the way they eat!

And the way they multiply! They have children once a week, I do believe.

It's disgusting."

"It certainly is," said the wood-mouse. "Cousin House-Mouse and I were just sitting and talking about it, cousin. But what's to be done, cousin? I am hard pressed by the field-mouse and get the blame for all his villainy. Some time ago, the house-mouse had to put up with harm for your sake, because you bit the odd man in the nose or else ate and drank things. Now one has come who is stronger than you; and so it's your turn. Besides, it seems to me that you are big enough to send the rat home to where she came from."

"Big enough?" said the rat. "Big enough? That great brown brute is bigger than I am! And then there are so many of them! I am the last of my race. When I am dead, there will be no more black rats in this part of the country. And now I am going to die."