CHAPTER IV.
At the sound of the fall, the Councillor ran up the steps to his front door, and put out his head cautiously to see what was the matter.
"Gypsies!" said Uncle Columbus without raising his eyes from his book; and for the first time in his life he was right!
Gypsies it certainly was, as the Councillor soon determined; and he hastily scratched some snow over the door, and retired to the back kitchen with his whole family, in a terrible state of fright and excitement.
"What can the boy have fallen into?" he enquired vainly of the Hedgehog-mother, and of Uncle Columbus, in turn. "There are no houses there that I know of. We have been saved by almost a miracle!"
As they remained shuddering in a little frightened knot—only Uncle Columbus maintaining his philosophical calm—the air filled with the odour of burnt sugar; a faint knocking was heard against the side of the stove pipe, and in another minute the Mole-father's red nightcap appeared through a hole, and his kind face shortly followed.
"Don't be frightened," he said reassuringly. "I have made a little tunnel and come through—merely to explain things. I thought perhaps you might be a little alarmed."
"Alarmed!" cried the Hedgehog-mother. "It doesn't describe it! Terrified, and distracted, is nearer to the real thing. The sugar biscuits are all spoilt, for I forgot them in the oven; and my daughter Berta fainted on the top of the stove, and is so seriously singed, she will be unable to appear at the party. Not that we shall be able to have a party now," continued the Hedgehog-mother, weeping, "for Uncle Columbus sat down on the plum cake in mistake for a foot-stool, and Fritz has trodden on the punch bottles. Oh, what a series of misfortunes!"
"Cheer up, my good neighbour, all will come right in time," said the Mole-father encouragingly.
"As long as the Court Hedgehog doesn't appear in the middle," wailed the Councillor. "It makes me shudder in every quill to think of it. Not even a front door to receive him at!"