SUMMER DAYS 



71 



ears in love with a charming young rat whom I 

 met one day wandering about rather disconsolately, 

 because she, too, was a lonely orphan. Pity is akin 

 to love, and I took her straight away and showed 

 her my house. She admired my taste in the way 

 of choosing an ornamental situation, but set to 

 work at once to make alterations and enlargements, 

 saying that the house itself was not fit for a lady to 

 live in. I thought her promptitude a trifle cool, as 

 I had not by any means made up my mind to marry 

 her ; however, she had evidently made up hers, and 

 so that settled the question, as it so often does in 

 the world : and it was something to get possession 

 of a wife without a quarrel. Food and wives are 

 the only two things which seem to me to cause 

 quarrels among animals, and it would have been a 

 great pity, when food was so plentiful, if quarrels 

 had come into Paradise over a wife. We were 

 great friends for quite a week, but after that time 

 had elapsed she began to treat the house as if it was 

 all of it hers and none of it mine, so I went off in a 

 hufiP and dug myself another a little further on, near 

 enough to be friends, but not near enough to quarrel, 

 and I talked to her quite politely whenever I met her. 



My new den was just under the nest of a harvest 

 mouse. I do not personally care for mice : they 



