“They have traps,” answered the mole, “which they put in the passages and corridors of our great underground palaces.”
“Your houses, I suppose, you mean,” said Tommy Smith.
“I mean what I say,” said the mole. “You may live in a house, I daresay, but I think the place that I live in is quite large and fine enough to be called a palace, so I call it one.”
“Oh! but it cannot be so big as the house that I live in,” said Tommy Smith.
“Well,” said the mole, “I should just like to know how long the longest corridor in your house is.”
Tommy Smith thought to himself a little. The house he lived in was not a very large one, for his father was not a very rich man. There were not many passages in it, and he did not think the longest of them was long enough to be called a corridor. Still, he thought that they must be longer than the passages of a mole’s house, and he couldn’t help feeling rather proud as he said, “Oh! I don’t know exactly, because I have never measured it, but perhaps it is six yards long.”
“Six yards?” cried the mole. “Do you call that a corridor? Why, some of mine are more than twenty times as long as that. You might walk over a whole field without coming to the end of them. And how many corridors has your house got, then?”
“Oh, I think there are three,” said Tommy Smith; but this time he didn’t feel nearly so proud.
“Good gracious!” cried the mole. “Why, yours must be a very poor place to live in. I wish I could show you over my palace, but you are such an awkward size that you would never be able to get into it. My corridors are longer than yours, but they are not nearly so high. However, perhaps it is just as well that you can’t get into it, for if you were once there, I am sure you would never want to go back again.”
“Perhaps, Mr. Mole,” said Tommy Smith, “as you can’t show me over it, you will tell me what it is like.”