“Of course I have a nursery,” said the mole. “What should I do with my children if I had not? I could not have them always in the fortress, or playing about in the corridors. They would be quite out of place there, and very much in the way. So I have a nursery for them, and they lie there upon a nice warm bed, which I make myself, of young grass and other soft things.”
“Oh, then I suppose that you are the mother mole,” said Tommy Smith.
“Yes, I am,” said the mole; “and you should call me Mrs. Mole, and not Mr. as you have been doing; and as for my being like a person, why, I am one, of course, and an important person too, I think. Why, do you know that I drain the land?”
“Do you really, Mrs. Mole?” said Tommy Smith; “but is not that very difficult?”
“You would find it so, I daresay,” answered the mole, “but to me it is quite easy.”
“How do you do it?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Why, by digging to be sure,” the mole said. “I just make my tunnels, and my trenches, and my corridors, and then when the rain comes it runs off into them, and doesn’t lie on the ground so long as it would if they were not there.”
“Oh, but if the water runs into your tunnels,” said Tommy Smith, “how is it that you are not drowned?”
“Oh, it does not stay there long enough for that,” said the mole; “and, besides, I am a very good swimmer. Just take me up again and put me into that little pond there, and I will show you,”—for there was a pond not far off where some ducks and geese were swimming about. “Drive those rude things away first,” said the mother mole, as Tommy Smith stood with her in his hand, at the edge of the pond, just ready to drop her in. “If they see me, they will be sure to make some rude remark, and, indeed, there is no saying what liberties they might take.”
So Tommy Smith drove away the ducks and geese, and then dropped the mother mole into the water, and,—would you believe it?—she swam almost as well as if she had been a duck or a goose herself, moving all her four little feet at a great rate, and going along very quickly. She did look so funny. She went across the pond, and then turned round and came back again, and, as she scuttled out on to the bank, she said, “So now you see that a mole can swim. Can you?”