“If we’re only contented, some cause we shall find
To be thankful: the mole thought it nice to be blind.”
THE next walk that Tommy Smith took was over some fields where there were a great many mole-hills. Of course, Tommy Smith had often seen mole-hills before, but I am not sure if he had ever seen a mole; for a mole, as you know, lives underneath the ground, and does not often come up to the top of it. So, when he saw a little black thing scrambling about in the grass, he cried out, “Oh! whatever is that?” and ran to it and picked it up.
“You won’t hurt me, I know,” said the mole (for it was one)—“and I don’t mind your looking at me.” You see Tommy Smith was getting a much better boy to animals, now that they had told him something about themselves, and the animals were beginning to find this out, and were not so frightened of him as they used to be.
Tommy Smith looked at the mole, and stroked it as it lay in his hand, and then he said, “Why, what a funny little black thing you are.”
“Little!” said the mole; “I don’t know what you mean by that. I am much bigger than the mouse or the shrew-mouse. You don’t expect me to be as big as the rat, do you?”
“I don’t know,” said Tommy Smith, “but, you know, the rat is not so very big.”
“He is as big as he requires to be, I suppose,” said the mole, “and so am I. I have never felt too small in all my life, and I wonder that you should think me so. Why, look at those great hills of earth which I have flung up all over the fields. I am big enough to have made those, anyhow, and strong enough too. And look, how large and high they are.”
“But are they so very high?” said Tommy Smith. “Why, I step over them quite easily.”
“Dear me, that seems very wonderful,” said the mole. “But I advise you not to do it often, for it must be a great exertion, and you might hurt yourself. But you must not think that because you are very big, I am very small. That would be very conceited.”