Arvicola, the meadow-mouse, that duck-legged, 

 stump-tailed, pot-bellied mouse whose paths 

 you see everywhere iu the meadows and fields, 

 stays wide awake all winter. He is not so ten- 



The niendow-mouse. 



der as Z(rpus. The cold does not bother him ; 

 he likes it. Up he comes from his underground 

 uest,— or home, rather, for it is more than a 

 mere sleeping-place,— and runs out into the 

 snow like a boy. He dives and plunges about 

 in the soft white drifts, plowing out roads that 



[55] 



