‘I won’t cry,’ said Elsie, sobbing as violently as ever. ‘I can be brave, even if I’m not a saint but only a turnip-mistaker. I’ll be a Bastille prisoner, and tame a mouse!’ She dried her eyes, though the bosom of the black frock still heaved like the sea after a storm, and looked about for a mouse to tame. One could not begin too soon. But unfortunately there seemed to be no mouse at liberty just then. There were mouse-holes right enough, all round the wainscot, and in the broad, time-worn [p188 boards of the old floor. But never a mouse.
‘Mouse, mouse!’ Elsie called softly. ‘Mousie, mousie, come and be tamed!’
Not a mouse replied.
The attic was perfectly empty and dreadfully clean. The other attic, Elsie knew, had lots of interesting things in it—old furniture and saddles, and sacks of seed potatoes,—but in this attic nothing. Not so much as a bit of string on the floor that one could make knots in, or twist round one’s finger till it made the red ridges that are so interesting to look at afterwards; not even a piece of paper in the draughty, cold fireplace that one could make paper boats of, or prick letters in with a pin or the tag of one’s shoe-laces.
As she stooped to see whether under the grate some old match-box or bit of twig might have escaped the broom, she saw suddenly what she had wanted most—a mouse. It was lying on its side. She put out her hand very slowly and gently, and whispered in her softest tones, ‘Wake up, Mousie, wake up, and come and be tamed.’ But the mouse never moved. And when she took it in her hand it was cold.
‘Oh,’ she moaned, ‘you’re dead, and now I can never tame you’; and she sat on the cold [p189 hearth and cried again, with the dead mouse in her lap.
‘Don’t cry,’ said somebody. ‘I’ll find you something to tame—if you really want it.’
Elsie started and saw the head of a black bird peering at her through the square opening that leads to the chimney. The edges of him looked ragged and rainbow-coloured, but that was because she saw him through tears. To a tearless eye he was black and very smooth and sleek.
‘Oh!’ she said, and nothing more.
‘Quite so,’ said the bird politely. ‘You are surprised to hear me speak, but your surprise will be, of course, much less when I tell you that I am really a Prime Minister condemned by an Enchanter to wear the form of a crow till … till I can get rid of it.’