"The next thing," said Fuzz, "is to find the way into the barn."
"You will be very clever if you do that," said a poor little weak voice beside them; and, looking down, they saw a tiny house-mouse shivering in the snow. "I have been trying to find a way in all day, but unless you go past Miss Patty Grey-Fur's hole there is no other way."
"Show me where Miss Patty Grey-Fur's hole is, then," said Fuzz boldly, "and I will knock at the door and tell her that we want to come in."
The little mouse opened his eyes wide at this, but he said nothing, and led the way round to the back of the barn. Now this barn was not, like most country barns, a tumble-down sort of place into which a mouse might make his way by any number of holes. It was quite a new barn, built of iron, and as Fuzz and Buzz followed the house-mouse they could not see a single hole anywhere. When they had walked nearly all round it, the house-mouse stopped beside a pipe that led up from the floor of the barn to the roof. Now this pipe did not go straight up in the way that pipes usually go, but it leaned to one side, so that an active mouse could easily walk up it.
"You must go up this pipe," said the house-mouse, "and when you get to the top you must walk along the gutter until you see a tiny hole in the roof, and then if you put your head inside it, you will see Miss Patty Grey-Fur sitting there."
So Fuzz and Buzz ran up the pipe and along the gutter as they had been told, until they came to the little hole in the roof. But just as Fuzz was going to put his head inside it, Miss Patty Grey-Fur popped hers out so suddenly that Fuzz very nearly tumbled backwards off the roof.
"What are you doing here?" she said in an angry squeak. "I have had nothing but beggars at my door all day long, and I am quite tired of telling them to go away."
"We aren't beggars, Aunt Patty," said Fuzz bravely. She looked such a very cross old mouse that he would have liked to run away. "We are your nephew and niece, Fuzz and Buzz Brownie."
