Then—and not till then—did Master Meadow Mouse let him go.
Master Meadow Mouse chased his cousin no more, but hurried away to Farmer Green's orchard, where he gnawed a ring all the way around one of the young fruit trees, at the top of the snow. It was the first big meal he had enjoyed for weeks. And he went home feeling that the winter was not so hard as he had thought, after all.
But Farmer Green didn't agree with him. When he happened to go into the orchard one day, later, and saw tree after tree ruined, he was very, very much displeased.
"I ought to have put wire netting around those young trees," he told the hired man. "This is what comes of a hard winter."
In one way Peter Mink was like Master Meadow Mouse. He enjoyed swimming. And he spent a great deal of his time along the streams that threaded their way through Pleasant Valley. Sometimes Peter dawdled on the banks of Swift River. Sometimes he lingered for days in the neighborhood of Black Creek. Nor did he disdain so small a stream as the brook that crossed the meadow. It was deep enough for a swim. And he knew that muskrats lived under its banks. While as for meadow mice—well, Peter Mink had surprised many a one swimming in the brook. If it hadn't been for the meadow mice perhaps he wouldn't have visited the brook so often.
Even in winter Master Meadow Mouse just had to have his cold dip now and then. So he ran one of his many snow tunnels to the brook, making a little opening that led under the ice, where the water had fallen away and left a cavern. Just because there was skating for Johnnie Green on top of the brook it mustn't be supposed that Master Meadow Mouse wasn't going to have a swim when he wanted one.