Part 2

“If you disturb my little friends again,” roared the Elephant, “I’ll break every bone in your body.”

Small Dog walked on crutches for weeks after that, and he has never annoyed White Rabbit and Gray Mouse in their happy home. In fact, all three became very good friends and many is the time I have seen them sitting out in the barnyard smoking their corn-cob pipes.

WHITE RABBIT’S CHEESE SCRUPLE

V

WHITE RABBIT’S CHEESE SCRUPLE

White Rabbit had so many scruples that sometimes he could not sleep. He awoke one night and came over to Gray Mouse’s bed and pulled at the covers.

“Gray Mouse,” he whispered, “I have a scruple, and it keeps me awake. I am afraid that it would not be right for you to go to the Man’s house to-night just because there has been a party, and there are so many good things lying around within reach.”

“Who said anything about cake?” yawned Gray Mouse, and he rolled over as if he were going to sleep again.

“Gray Mouse,” called White Rabbit, “I thought that I ought to ask you. Do you think it would be wrong if I went along with you and just took a look into the cellar to see if that careless cook had forgotten to put away the carrots?”

“Certainly not,” answered Gray Mouse, scrambling out of bed. “Even if you should make a mistake and eat some carrots, it would be all right, because it would teach that cook to be careful. I heard the man’s wife tell her only the other day that she was the most careless cook they had had for a week. If I should find some cake, it would be well for me to eat as much of it as I can, so as to keep the man’s children from making themselves ill.”

So Gray Mouse and White Rabbit hurried out from under the barn floor and went to the cellar of the man’s house, laughing and jumping.

“What a pretty, little house,” said Gray Mouse, for in the centre of the cellar floor was a little wire box with a funny door.

Gray Mouse and White Rabbit walked all around it.

“Why,” said Gray Mouse, “it has cheese inside of it. Put in your paw, White Rabbit, and pull out that fine supper for me.”

“No, thank you,” answered White Rabbit, “I have such a scruple. That is toasted cheese inside of the little house, and toasted cheese is what men call Welsh Rabbit. I will let you know, Gray Mouse, that I am no cannibal. The door is open. Why don’t you go in and get the cheese yourself?”

“You are not very obliging, White Rabbit,” replied Gray Mouse, “but since you are so mean I think that I will get it myself.”

So Gray Mouse walked into the wire house and tried to carry away the cheese which was fastened on a little rod. There was a click and the door of the wire house closed behind Gray Mouse with a snap. Gray Mouse was in a trap which the man had set for him.

“Help me out, White Rabbit,” shrieked Gray Mouse. “Your jaws are larger than mine. Bite a hole in the side of this house so I can come out!”

White Rabbit had chewed carrots and turnips and soft things all his life, and it only set his teeth on edge when he tried to cut a way for Gray Mouse out of the little wire house.

“Scat B-r-r-r,” came a noise, and old Green Eyes, the cat, sprang from out behind a tub. White Rabbit jumped out of reach.

“Ugh!” meowed Green Eyes to Gray Mouse, “I’ve got a thief and I’m going to eat him.”

Green Eyes tried as hard as he could to get his paws through the cage. One of his claws caught Gray Mouse in the side and made the blood come. Green Eyes became very angry when he saw that he could not reach Gray Mouse. He struck the trap with his claws. He picked it up and gave it a good shaking. He lifted it over his head and threw it down on the floor as hard as he could. The trap rolled over and over and at last rested bottom side up. That made the door, which had been closed all this time, fall back. When Gray Mouse saw that the door was open all he had to do was to jump right out of the trap. He scuttled out of that cellar as fast as he could and up at the top of the steps he met White Rabbit.

“It was very warm down there,” said White Rabbit, as he saw Gray Mouse, “and you know that my fur is so thick that I did not feel like staying down there any longer. It was very bright of you to get out of that trap.”

Then White Rabbit and Gray Mouse went away to the barn laughing and chuckling to themselves. They went back to the house the next night.

“Now, then,” said White Rabbit, “you go into the trap, Gray Mouse, and I will pretend that I am the cat.”

Gray Mouse went into the trap and helped himself to the cheese, and when the door snapped he only laughed. Then White Rabbit turned the cage over and the door fell back and Gray Mouse crawled out again.

“That is very fine,” said White Rabbit. “If it had not been for my cheese scruple it would never have happened. If I had put my paw in there I could not have reached the cheese, and besides that, you would not have had nearly so much fun.”

Gray Mouse and White Rabbit went every night and got all the cheese in that trap and in all the traps around the house. Gray Mouse took home so much cheese that he did not know what to do with it, and White Rabbit feasted on carrots. They paid no attention to Green Eyes at all. Whenever the cat came after Gray Mouse, that saucy animal would get himself caught in a trap and laugh at the cat. Gray Mouse and White Rabbit grew bigger and stronger every day, and they could run so fast that the cat could never catch them.

ABOUT THE APPLE BUTTER CAT

VI

ABOUT THE APPLE BUTTER CAT

Green-Eyes, the cat, was very angry when he found that the man thought that he could not catch mice. He was afraid that he would be put out in the kennel with the dog. He and the dog had never been very good friends and he did not like the idea of being in the same house with an animal with such sharp teeth and such a harsh voice.

Green-Eyes used to sit up all night with his paw on his head, saying, “Let me think.” The neighbors’ cats came out on the back fence and made fun of Green-Eyes all night long.

“It’s too bad,” they meowed, “that you cannot see in the dark. Why, you cannot even see a big white rabbit.”

Gray Mouse and his friend, White Rabbit, went every night to the cellar of the man’s house, where they helped themselves to cake and apple pie and cheese and carrots. Green-Eyes heard the man say that it was time to drown that good-for-nothing cat. He saw it was time for him to do something to save his life, and so he kept on thinking and thinking.

He crawled under a pile of carrots on the cellar floor one night and the carrots fell all over and hid him all except the tip of his tail. Then he waited for White Rabbit and Gray Mouse.

Now, that night Patrick O’Possum went to visit Gray Mouse and White Rabbit. He was a friend of Gray Mouse’s cousin, Field Mouse, and whenever he went under the barn floor, where Gray Mouse and White Rabbit lived, he was very welcome.

“Gray Mouse,” asked Patrick O’Possum, “do you know where I can get any good, sweet potatoes?”

Gray Mouse winked at White Rabbit and said that he knew where there were sweet potatoes nearly a foot long and so sweet that sugar tasted like vinegar compared to them. Patrick O’Possum sighed and looked happy.

“I’ll take you to the next moonlight party I have,” he said, “if you will show me where I can find those very fine sweet potatoes.”

So Patrick O’Possum, Gray Mouse and White Rabbit went running and hopping and laughing to the cellar of the man’s house. Patrick O’Possum turned to Gray Mouse and White Rabbit after he had taken a good look around the cellar, and then he smiled, and smiled.

“I like sweet potatoes very much,” he whispered as he drew White Rabbit and Grey Mouse close to him, “but I would not give a cent a bushel for all the carrots in the world. If I had white fur and long ears I would rather eschew those carrots over there than chew them.”

Then Patrick O’Possum poked Gray Mouse and White Rabbit in the ribs and laughed inside. The sweet potatoes were in a large swinging box near the pile of carrots. Patrick O’Possum jumped up and got on top of the box. He took out some sweet potatoes and tossed them down on the floor. White Rabbit picked them up and carried them out of the cellar, while Gray Mouse stood by. There was a long shelf above the swinging box where the sweet potatoes were and on this shelf were jars of jelly and jam and spiced watermelon and all kinds of good things. At one end was a big jar of apple butter. After Patrick O’Possum had thrown down all the sweet potatoes that he wanted he crept along the shelf and gave the jar of apple butter a hard push. It fell, struck the edge of the sweet potato bin, broke all to pieces and apple butter and broken jar and all fell right on top of the pile of carrots. There were the queerest sounds which came out of that pile of carrots that you ever heard. Green-Eyes meowed and cried and kicked and arched up his back. He shook up that pile of carrots as though there were an earthquake in the cellar. Then all covered over with apple butter and little carrots and bits of broken crock, he went up the cellar stairs yelling and screaming at every step.

White Rabbit and Patrick O’Possum picked up all the sweet potatoes that they could carry and ran away to the barn. Gray Mouse led the way. As they hurried along they got a glimpse of the man who was coming down the hall in his night clothes with a gun over his shoulder. Just as the White Rabbit, the Gray Mouse and Patrick O’Possum scampered under the barn floor, they heard bang-bang, from the porch of the man’s house.

“That must have been a shot gun,” said White Rabbit, as he stroked his whiskers and smiled.

“Um, um,” said Patrick O’Possum, “but these are good sweet potatoes. This is more fun than a coon hunt.”

Green-Eyes never went back to the man’s house again. Many of his friends thought that the man had shot him and the next night out on the back yard fence, all the neighbors’ cats met together and sang his funeral song. I think, though, that Green-Eyes was not killed. One day, when I was out hunting in the woods, I stopped to take a drink at a little spring and a funny, little lizard stood on the edge and said: “Excuse me, Mr. Hunter, but did you ever see an apple butter cat?”

GRAY MOUSE’S RICH BROTHER

VII

GRAY MOUSE’S RICH BROTHER

Gray Mouse was sitting on his front porch one afternoon, when he heard a rumble of wheels and a coach stopped before the door. It was the funniest coach you ever saw, and it was drawn by four tumblebugs all covered with silver harness. Two grasshoppers sat on the box. One of them jumped down and opened the door. Then a big, fat mouse, all dressed up and carrying a cane with a gold head, got out and came up the steps of Gray Mouse’s house.

“You don’t seem to know me,” said the fat mouse as he clapped Gray Mouse on the back.

“Your ways are familiar,” answered Gray Mouse, “but your face I do not remember at all.”

“Why, I am your long-lost brother, Church Mouse,” squeaked that wealthy animal, “and I have just come back to visit all my friends and relations.”

Church Mouse strutted up and down the porch, whirled his cane and played with his watch chain. Gray Mouse was sitting in his old rocking chair and he had on his shabbiest pair of carpet slippers.

“You need not be so proud,” said Gray Mouse. “I remember the time when you did not have a piece of cheese with which to bless yourself. Don’t put on any airs with your coach and your old tumblebugs. I have not forgotten when you lived in the church across the road, and were so poor that many is the time you were glad to come over to my poor little house for dinner.”

“You need not be cross,” replied Church Mouse, “I am not proud, and to-morrow I shall bring you a very large cheese.”

“I am very glad to see you,” said Gray Mouse, changing his manners and smiling. “Now, tell me how did you get so sleek and fat?”

Gray Mouse brought his best easy chair out on the porch, and Church Mouse sat down in it and crossed his hands over his stomach.

“Well, I was so poor,” began Church Mouse, “that many is the time I have gnawed the backs of hymn books. One day I was wondering how I was going to get along, and decided to be a book agent. So I got Hedge Hog, who is clever with quills, to write a book for me, called ‘The True History of the Great Which What.’ Then I started out to sell it.

“Well, it was very hard work at first. Cochin, the chicken, slammed the door of his coop right in my face. Chip Munk chased me off his door mat, Snapping Turtle called me names and bit off the end of my tail. Then I saw the Adder and I said just as politely as I could: ‘Mr. Adder, I have here the True History of the Great Which What.’

“‘What witch?’ asked Adder, who was as deaf as anything. He had an ear trumpet, but I do not believe that the trumpet helped him to hear any better.

“‘No witch,’ I answered.

“‘Norwich is in Connecticut,’ answered Adder. ‘That is where I bought my ear trumpet.’

“‘I said Which What,’ said I.

“‘No,’ replied the Adder, ‘I do not need any dried apples to-day.’

“I was so angry that I cried. I went to the wheat bin out in Deacon Jones’ barn and there I met my old friend, Weevil.

“‘Of course,’ said Weevil, when I told him about my bad luck, ‘you don’t sell books here because everybody is so intelligent. You come with me to Asia and you will do far better.’

“So I stayed in the bin with Weevil. In a day or two, the wheat was put in a wagon and taken to the railroad station. Before long it arrived in New York. Then it was thrown down hill into a ship and for days and days after that Weevil and I knew nothing except the splash of waters and the tip, tip of that great ship.

“We reached the place called Asia. As soon as I got a chance I said good-by to Weevil and walked until I was in the jungle. When you sell books it is a good thing to know somebody who is big. Weevil told me to go the first thing and see Yellow Lion. I heard Yellow Lion roaring among the trees and I walked up to where he was sitting.

“‘Yellow Lion,’ I said very politely, ‘Yellow Lion, won’t you please buy my book?’

“‘Has it got anything about me in it?’ asked Yellow Lion.

“‘No,’ I answered.

“‘Well, then, I have no time to talk to little animals like you,’ said Yellow Lion. ‘You will oblige me by getting out of my lair, or I shall step all over you.’

“‘Very well,’ I answered; ‘I do not wish to crowd you, Yellow Lion; and I am not of a revengeful nature.’ So I stood up straight, and looked very proud and angry.

“Two days after that I was walking through the jungle when I heard a loud noise. I peeped through the bushes and there I saw Yellow Lion lying under a hammock.

“‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘Seeing that you are so comfortable in your nice, new hammock, I thought I would just come and say how d’ye do.’

“‘You mean, little animal!’ roared Yellow Lion, ‘don’t you see that the hunters have caught me in a net?’

“‘It is too bad,’ I answered, ‘that you are in a net, but it is still worse to be in the jungle without a copy of “The True History of the Great Which What.” In the little book which I hold in my hand is told why the what is which and what the what what said to the which who of the when did.’

“‘Stop, stop!’ roared Yellow Lion.

“‘Here is a chapter,’ said I, ‘which tells how a lion got caught in a net and how a poor, little mouse in return for a kindness cut the net with his sharp teeth and set the lion free.’

“‘What kindness?’ asked Yellow Lion.

“‘All that the lion did,’ I answered, ‘was to buy a book which the mouse was selling.’

“‘I’ll take that book,’ said Yellow Lion. ‘I’ll take a hundred of them—and when I get out I’ll make everybody else buy one.’

“‘All right, Yellow Lion,’ said I.

“Then I gnawed the net, and Yellow Lion got away. The king of beasts kept his word. I sold more than a million copies of the book from that one sample, for Yellow Lion told all the beasts that they must buy. That is how I became so rich.”

“You are certainly a clever little animal,” said Gray Mouse, when Church Mouse had finished the story. “I am very proud of my rich brother.”

AT THE CHURCH MOUSE’S CIRCUS

VIII

AT THE CHURCH MOUSE’S CIRCUS

Church Mouse had so much money after he came back from India that he decided to start a circus.

“There is nothing,” said he, “which will make so much money as a circus, for red lemonade costs only half a cent a barrel and we sell it for five cents a glass; and there is so very much money in selling candy at two sticks for a cent apiece that I really think that I ought to start a very fine circus.”

So he hired all the spiders he could find to make him a tent and had Patrick O’Possum cut some very fine tent poles. He pitched the tent right out in the middle of Deacon Jones’ meadow lot. He got Ugly Dog to sell tickets because nobody would dare to give Ugly Dog any bad money. Ugly Dog was such a good barker that all the animals and all the birds could hear him as he said:

“Here, birds and animals, is your superior circus. Step right up and see the fierce lion, brought from his native lair and the great and only striped tiger which can eat a man without asking by your leave. Come on, birds and animals, for this is the only show on earth owned by a church mouse. Circus, menagerie and hiphopadrome, all under one tent. Walk right up.”

Church Mouse had tried to get a real live tiger, but he found that he could not afford to pay for a tiger’s ticket all the way from India, so he got his friend Field Mouse to put on striped clothes and look very fierce and be the tiger. Mole was the elephant and White Rabbit put some wool around his neck for a mane and pretended that he was a lion. This circus was held at night and the glow worms came in free on condition that they would hang from the top of the tent and give all the light that was needed.

Church Mouse had been so careful in arranging the circus that when the animals came they thought it was the finest show which they had ever seen. When they got to looking too closely at anything and began to wonder if all lions were white and had long ears, the lights would go out all at once and they had to think about something else. Over in one corner was a little musk rat in a tank and all the animals and all the birds, although they thought that they had seen him before, believed that he was a hippopotamus. The more they looked at him the more they wondered, for he seemed like such a wonderful animal.

When the time for the circus came, all the birds and all the animals gathered around the ring for which more than a hundred ants had brought the sand. There was a loud clapping of hands and the Tumblebug Brothers came into the centre of the ring kissing their hands to the crowd and making a low bow to everybody. They leaped up into the air and turned somersaults and stood on their heads, and whirled around on their backs. Every time they did anything wonderful all the beasts and all the birds clapped their paws or shook their wings and said: “Isn’t this a very fine show, indeed?”

Then about twenty ants, all dressed up in green, rolled two great big balls into the middle of the ring. Each Tumblebug took one of these balls, which was as big as he was himself, and whirled it around and up and down, and then he lay on his back and with his feet threw the ball clear up into the air and caught it again. Then the Tumblebugs threw the balls back and forth to each other.

Nimble Grasshopper came out, and he jumped clear over the back of the make-believe elephant and the make-believe lion and came right down again on his feet. Then Leap Frog came stumbling out into the middle of the ring all covered over with flour and with red paint on his face and a little bit of a white pointed hat on his head.

“When is a mouse when it is spinning?” he asked.

All the animals and all the beasts looked at each other and said: “Why, we don’t understand. When is a mouse when it is spinning?”

Leap Frog looked all around, and then said: “What! Give it up? Don’t know? Can’t guess? Too hard? Why, it’s very easy indeed. The answer is, a paper of tacks.”

Then all the birds and all the animals laughed like anything.

“What a very good joke,” they said. “How very clever! And isn’t it strange that we should never have thought of it before?”

“Now, then,” said Church Mouse, who was all dressed up in a long coat, and had a silk hat and a long whip. “As the ring master of this show, I want to introduce my great and good friend, Sig Salamander, who eats fire for breakfast instead of oatmeal, and drinks his coffee boiling hot. He will now do himself the honor of eating a red hot poker as though it were a stick of molasses candy.”

Then Salamander came out, followed by four mice, carrying a pan of coals.

“Everything that I have,” said Salamander, “must be red hot. Once I ate some red pepper drops and ever since that nothing has been too hot for me.”

He ate all sorts of fire, and then Wasp got up and said that he did not think Salamander could stand everything hot, and with this he gave him a sting.

Salamander ran away from the place, and as he turned to go his feet kicked the pan of coals and sent them way up in the air, until they set fire to the tent. All the beasts and all the birds saw the flames above them, and they were nearly scared to death. They scampered everyway that they could. They knocked down the seats and kicked over the tent poles, upset the animal cages and spilled the red lemonade. Before Church Mouse knew what had happened his tent had all burned up, and it was all that he could do to save his money and his boxes of cheese. After it was all over he sat looking at the ruins, and then said:

“It seems to me that I have made a great mistake. If I ever have a salamander in a circus of mine again I will have everybody who sees the circus a salamander, too.”

Although the tent had burned up, Church Mouse had made so much money that he did not have to work any more. He built a fine house, and every Sunday as you saw him sitting in church under one of the pews you would never have believed that he knew a single thing about circuses.

HOOT OWL INVENTS GOLF

IX

HOOT OWL INVENTS GOLF

The Bogey Man was so fond of playing golf that he never had time to think of anything else. He lived on oatmeal water and smoked a pipe filled with cabbage leaves and chopped hay. Golf was played in those days with one straight stick, and all you had to do was to knock round stones over the meadow. The Bogey Man was very careless, and he was always sending the golf balls into the holes where the rabbits, field mice and snakes lived. He played every day in Deacon Jones’ meadow lot. He used to take his stick, when he lost the balls and pry into the homes of the poor, little animals and snakes. In that way he spoiled the walls and broke the parlor furniture.

One day, the Bogey Man put a ball on top of an ant’s house, because he said he could strike it better. The roof of the house fell in and the ant’s aunt was so badly hurt that she never got over it.