But if he thought that she would be pleased to see them, he was very much mistaken.
"Oh, are you?" she said with a sort of sniff. "Well, then, the sooner you go home again the better. This is not at all a safe place for field-mice. There are dogs, and cats too, in the yard. Besides, there are a great many children, and if they saw you they would be sure to want to catch you and put you in a cage and keep you as a pet. How would you like that?"
"We should not like it at all, Aunt Patty," Fuzz said; "so if you will let us come inside the barn we shall feel much safer. And then tomorrow, when we have got enough corn, we will go home again."
"I shall do nothing of the sort," said Miss Patty Grey-Fur; and now her long whiskers were quite stiff with rage. "How dare you want my corn! There is not enough here to last me through the winter if I am not very careful of it. And I cannot afford to give you one single grain."
Now, as Fuzz, who had been peeping in through the hole, could see for himself, this was not true. The barn was full of corn from the roof to the floor. Then quite suddenly Fuzz began to laugh, and he laughed and laughed until the tears ran down his face.
"What are you laughing at?" said Miss Patty Grey-Fur. "You are a very rude young mouse indeed."
"I did not mean to be rude," said Fuzz, "but I could not help thinking, that if you did really eat all this corn you would be as big as the barn by the time the spring came." But before he had finished speaking Miss Patty Grey-Fur pulled her head in with a sudden jerk, and then shut the door in their faces.
And so Fuzz and Buzz were left standing outside in the gutter, and they had to climb down the pipe again, and tell the little house-mouse, who was waiting for them in the snow, that their aunt would not let them in either.
The next thing to be done was to find a place in which to spend the night, and the little house-mouse was just telling them that the only place he knew of was a cold, draughty hole behind the water-butt, when he suddenly stopped and pricked up his ears.
"We must hide," he said, "somebody is coming. Let us get inside the water-pipe."