Moses Mouse, who lived in the farmhouse, had warned Master Meadow Mouse. He had warned him to look out for Miss Snooper's nose.
Master Meadow Mouse did not pay any great attention to his new friend's advice. He was building himself a new home in Farmer Green's woodpile. And he went about his work as if there wasn't a cat within a hundred miles.
Then, one day, he caught a glimpse of Miss Snooper. He peeped out from a chink in the woodpile and saw her sitting on a stick of wood. She was so near him that Master Meadow Mouse could have leaped upon her back in one spring.
But he didn't do that. He gazed at her with round eyes, for Miss Snooper looked very fierce, especially when she opened her mouth and showed her sharp teeth as she yawned. Master Meadow Mouse saw that she was a quite different creature from the awkward kitten whom he had bitten on the nose earlier in the summer.
"Goodness!" thought Master Meadow Mouse, staring at Miss Snooper with great awe. "Goodness! Her whiskers are longer than mine!"
And then he drew back very softly and crept to his nest in the woodpile.
That night Moses Mouse came to make another call. And he brought his wife with him, so that she might see the stranger with the short tail who was going to live in Farmer Green's woodpile.
"I saw Miss Snooper to-day," Master Meadow Mouse told them.
"Did you bite her nose?" Mrs. Mouse asked him eagerly; for her husband had told her all about the newcomer.