Mr. Brownie gave a big shiver as he glanced round him, and then he said to his wife:
"My dear, I hope while I have been ill you have not forgotten to fill our larder. It was nearly empty when I was last in it."
"But, my dear," Mrs. Brownie cried, "I have forgotten to fill it. Besides, I have been so busy nursing you that I have not had time to think of anything else. And I don't believe that there is a single nut or one grass-root left in it."
"Then, my dear," said Mr. Brownie sadly, "we shall starve this winter, for it is too late now to find any acorns or anything else. The squirrels and the birds have taken them all."
Fuzz and Buzz looked very unhappy when they heard what their father and mother were saying, and Fuzz said to his sister:
"How sad it will be to be always hungry!"
And the two young mice, and their father and mother as well, looked still more unhappy as the days went by and the nuts and acorns in their larder grew fewer and fewer. But though Mr. Brownie could only limp about on three legs, he was not idle during those days. Mrs. Brownie was so very fat that she could not walk far without sitting down to rest, so she stayed at home, but Mr. Brownie, with Fuzz and Buzz trotting one on each side of him, went about the wood looking everywhere for nuts or acorns. But they could not find any. Mr. Brownie was a very proud mouse, so he would not beg from his neighbours; but they soon heard that he had very few nuts and acorns, and without waiting to be asked they gave him as much food as they could spare from their own larders. But that was not very much. The summer had been a wet and a very short one, and none of the mice who lived in that wood had been able to collect a very big store of food. So what they could give to the Brownie family would not be nearly enough to last them until the spring came, and the sun thawed the ground and made it soft again so that they could scratch into the earth and dig up roots.
"Oh, dear, dear!" sighed Mrs. Brownie. "Why didn't we take my sister's advice and go and live as she does in a barn, where there is always plenty of good oats and corn to be picked up?"
"Because," said Mr. Brownie, "there are too many cats and dogs living near barns to make them at all safe places for honest field-mice like ourselves. But you never know when you are well off, Mrs. Brownie."
"Well, at any rate," Mrs. Brownie remarked, "we couldn't be worse off than we are just now. For what is to become of us all without any food this winter, I am sure I don't know." And then poor Mrs. Brownie put her front paws up to her face and began to cry.