"Ah!" Mr. Crow cried. "I knew you had something in that tunnel. Remove the air at once, sir, or I'll go away and leave you."
"If his bill wasn't so hard—if it was as soft as the Kitten's nose—I'd bite it," Master Meadow Mouse thought.
And while he was thinking, all at once a shaft of light trickled inside his house. Old Mr. Crow had gone grumbling on his way.
Master Meadow Mouse felt ill at ease. Now that the grass had been cut from the meadow he began to think he didn't care to live there any longer. After his adventure with old Mr. Crow, Master Meadow Mouse scarcely dared stray from his dooryard in the daytime. Anybody, almost, could see him as he crept through the stubble.
At night he ventured further from home. And once he went even as far as the farmyard.
To his surprise he found that the grass in Farmer Green's yard was longer than he had ever seen it. Earlier in the summer, when Master Meadow Mouse visited that spot, he had been afraid to cross the lawn because it was clipped so short. But now he could creep through the thick green carpet and nobody could see him, unless a waving grass blade happened to catch somebody's eye. Everybody at the farmhouse had been too busy with haying to spend any time running a lawn mower.