"Why, Minnie, I am not tired of you. Pray, don't go home yet. Come and make me a visit in my snug little hole, so quiet underground. No storms reach there. I shall not whisk you about as squirrel has done; nor take you long, weary journeys through the air, like yellow-bird. I'll bring you cheese, and meal, and melon-seeds, till you grow rosy as your little sister Alice."
"My sister! What can you know about her, pray?"
"Wasn't I at your house this morning? I have, not far from this very wood, a passage-way underground that leads into your mother's pantry. Come to my nest, and you'll hear news from home."
CHAPTER XX.
HOUSEKEEPING.
Minnie gladly followed the mouse into his hole. To see some one who had been in her dear lost home, was almost as good as to feel her mother's gentle hand laid on her head once more.
In the promised news she was disappointed! Alas! the mouse disappointed her in many things. Minnie had not lived with him long before she found that she had fallen into bad company.
He was good-natured and hospitable in his way, but a sad thief, and his word could never be depended upon. The little girl even felt afraid of her own safety, when she saw what pleasure mouse took in betraying all who trusted in him.