[ CHAPTER XXIII.]
A PEEP THROUGH THE ROSES.
That night, when the round harvest moon was throwing her soft light on the earth, we climbed up the rose-tree by the window, and, quietly pushing aside the fragrant flowers, peeped in upon such a scene as rarely meets the eye of a rat.
There was a neat little kitchen, with a sanded floor and white-washed walls, so clean, so perfectly clean, that not even the sharp eyes of the race of Mus could have detected a speck upon them. Rows of plates lined the shelves on the wall, pans burnished till they shone like silver, a framed sampler hung over the mantelpiece, and a large clock merrily ticked behind the door. Near the wide hearth there was a table, on which a substantial supper was spread on a cloth white as new-fallen snow.
Round this table were seated the farmer, his wife, and our two old friends, Bob and Billy, in their clean smock-frocks, with country roses on their once sickly and sunken cheeks. One might have read Will Grange’s character in his kind, honest face; and his wife looked like a morning in May, all sweetness, brightness, and beauty,—such beauty as is not merely skin-deep.
The farmer tapped gaily on the table, and at the signal, Oddity, whom I had not at first perceived, clambered up to his knee, and from thence jumped on the cloth, to be fed from his master’s hand. He made his round of the party,—every one had something to give him; and I heard the merry voice of Billy as he patted his favourite’s snub nose,—“He’s a pretty little fellow! now, an’t he? I wonder what’s become of the old blind rat that he used to lead about in the shed?”
“Whiskerandos,” said I, pensively, to my companion, “I could almost wish myself in Oddity’s place!”
“So do not I,” he replied quickly, as he turned from the window. “One rat in ten millions may be petted and trusted, and show himself worthy of the trust; but our race was never intended by nature to hold the position of lap-dogs or cats.”
“And are we always to be hated by the lords of creation, never to be useful to man?”
“We are useful to man,” said my companion.
“Ah! in those places where he bakes us in pies, or makes hats or glove-thumbs of our poor skins. But in London—”