38 



WINTER 





was the hole, smooth and deep and dark, to store 

 them in. She found a way past the partition wall. 



Every morning I shook those nuts out of my boot 

 and sent them rattling over the cellar floor. Every 

 night the mouse gathered 

 them up and put them 

 snugly back into the toe 

 of the boot. She could not 

 have carried more than 

 one nut at a time up the 

 tall boot-leg and down the oily, slippery inside. 



I should have liked to see her scurrying about the 

 cellar, looking after her curiously difficult harvest. 

 Apparently, they were new nuts to her every evening. 

 Once I came down to find them lying untouched. 

 The mouse, perhaps, was away over night on other 

 business. But the following morning they were all 

 gathered and nicely packed in the boot as before. 

 And as before I sent them sixty ways among the 

 barrels and boxes of the furnace room. 



But I did it once too often, for it dawned upon 

 the mouse one night that these were the same old 

 nuts that she had gathered now a dozen times. That 

 night they disappeared. Where? I wondered. 



Weeks passed, and I had entirely forgotten about 

 the nuts, when I came upon them, the identical nuts 

 of my boot, tiered carefully up in a corner of the 

 deep, empty water-tank away off in the attic ! 



