“Everything does move pretty smoothly so far as the older Fielders go,” agreed Nibbler, “but I have a number of youngsters among the sackers and some of them can’t count as well as they might. You see the bags are made to hold exactly fifty grains apiece and if more goes in—especially if they are unusually fat grains—two or three too many may mean the splitting of a bag. And then some of the other lads will stop to play when they are out gathering straws and so let the fire get low. See! It needs more fuel this very minute! So if you’ll excuse me I’ll go see to it.”
And away he went in search of the boys who, as Dan plainly saw, were at that moment in the midst of a game of hide-and-go-seek just beyond the edge of the light.
“After the grains have been sacked,” Beader continued to explain, “the bags are put away in storehouses for winter use. Our people of the town—that is to say, the House-mice—trade cheese and cakes for wheat. We also harvest quite a bit of corn.”
“Are those all the things you have to eat?” asked Dan.
“Oh, dear, no,” answered the other. “There are nuts, and the Muskers, for instance, simply dote on apples. We always have an apple-rolling when apples are ripe. That’s the best fun of all. Sometimes we get an apple well up the side of a slope and then somebody starts laughing and it slips away and goes scooting back again.”
“Does any one ever bother you here in the Valley of Tick Tock?” Dan asked.
“No, indeed. To begin with I guess no one but the Pretty Lady with the Blue-Blue Eyes and the White-White Horse would know how to find us. And,” Beader added, drawing himself up to his full height, “even if they did there are the Jumping Dragoons and the Nightsville Musketeers. Some of us are always on guard.”
“Of course, of course,” agreed Dan, very seriously, and very solemnly. “But tell me, how is it you call yourselves dragoons and yet have no horses?”
“Oh, but we have. You see, I’m a dragoon only on every Day Before Clock Night. On Clock Night Day I’m a horse. That’s the way we do in almost everything. We take turns. I wasn’t riding my mouse-horse to-night because we do that only when we drill.”
“I see,” said Dan, “but about the different clock days. You were to tell me—”