The Travels of Fuzz and Buzz

ILLUSTRATED BY S. B. PEARSE
BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY

ONCE, not so very long ago, a family of field-mice lived in the middle of a big wood. There was Mr. Brownie, the father-mouse, and Mrs. Brownie, the mother mouse, and their two children, a boy-mouse and a girl-mouse, whose names were Fuzz and Buzz.
In the summer, and in the spring and autumn too, field-mice have a very nice time indeed; but in the winter, when the ground is frozen, and the nuts and acorns and berries are gone from the trees and bushes, their life is not quite so happy. And then, if the father-mouse has not laid in a good store of food they have not enough to eat, and are often very hungry until the spring comes round again.
But this Mr. Brownie was a very careful mouse, and during the autumn he always got such a large store of nuts and acorns, that when the winter came it found their larder nice and full.
But one windy day in the month of October, when he was hard at work digging up a big grass-root to carry home for the winter, a sad thing happened to him. A heavy branch was blown down from a tree close by, and it hit one of poor Mr. Brownie's front paws and broke it.
Fuzz and Buzz, who were having a merry game with the yellow leaves that were being tossed about by the wind, ran up to him looking very much frightened indeed, and then Fuzz went off as fast as he could to tell his mother that his father had been hurt.

Of course Mrs. Brownie came at once, and as one or two of her neighbours ran after her to see where she was going in such a hurry, they helped to carry poor Mr. Brownie home to his cosy nest.