“I know he will not come back!” sighed Oddity.
“Then why don’t you come and shake off this silly gloom? To tell you the plain truth, Oddity, your mind really requires opening, and there is nothing like travelling for that. You are, I am afraid, not a well-informed quadruped. I insist upon your embarking with us to-night, and we’ll make a rat of you, my good fellow!”
Oddity shook his head.
“What! you are resolved not to travel?”
“Not by water,” was his short reply.
“He is going into the country with me,” cried Bright-eyes, springing with a few light bounds to my side. “We’re going to my birth-place, near the sea-side. We will feast amongst the young corn there; and when the pea-blossom has faded, and the ripe pods hang temptingly down, we’ll climb up the stalks and shell them, and banquet on the sweet green seeds! We’ll revel in the strawberry beds, and try which peach is the ripest! Oh! merry lives lead the rats in a kitchen-garden, beneath the bright sun of summer!”
“I’ve half a mind to go with you myself,” said I, charmed with the rural description. But I remembered my engagement with Whiskerandos, and repressed the rising longing to feast upon English fruits, whose names sounded so tempting.
“Then farewell, Oddity,” cried I; “I fear I shall never meet you again.”
“I’ll come back to the old shed in winter,” said he.
“But I—ah! where shall I be then? How do I know, once crossing the sea, whether I shall ever be able to return?” I had not the faintest idea where Russia might be, or what sort of a place I should find it; whether its rats are black, brown, or white, fierce as the Hamster, or gentle as Zibethicus. A feeling of misgiving came suddenly over me; one fear above all others depressed my heart, and unconsciously I uttered it aloud: “I wonder whether in Russia rats find plenty to eat!”