"Never have I been so furious with anyone in my life as I was with that old rat.
"'Look! Look what you've done to me now!' I cried. 'It isn't even a navy blue. You've made me just hideous!'
"'I can't understand it,' he murmured. 'The middle vat used to be the black one, I know. They must have changed them. The blue one was always the one on the left.'
"'You're a stupid old duffer!' I said. And I left the dye shed in great anger and never went back to it again.
"Well, if I had been conspicuous before, now I was a hundred times more so. Against the black earth, or the green grass, or the white snow, or brown floors my loud, sky-blue coat could be seen as plain as a pikestaff. The minute I got outside the shed a cat jumped for me. I gave her the slip and got out into the street. There some wretched children spotted me and, calling to their friends that they had seen a blue mouse, they hunted me along the gutter. At the corner of the street two dogs were fighting. They stopped their fight and joined the chase after me. And very soon I had the whole blessed town at my heels. It was awful. I didn't get any peace till after night had fallen, and by that time I was so exhausted with running I was ready to drop.
"About midnight I met the lady mouse with whom I was in love, beneath a lamp-post. And, would you believe it? She wouldn't speak to me! Cut me dead, she did.
"'It was for your sake I got myself into this beastly mess,' I said, as she stalked by me with her nose in the air. 'You're an ungrateful woman, that's what you are.'
"'Oh, la, la, la!' said she, smirking. 'You wouldn't expect any self-respecting person to keep company with a blue mouse, would you?'
"Later, when I was trying to find a place to sleep, all the mice I met, wherever there was any light at all, made fun of me and pointed at me and jeered. I was nearly in tears. Then I went down to the river, hoping I might wash the dye off and so get white again. That, at least, would be better than the way I was now. But I washed and I swam and I rinsed, all to no purpose. Water made no impression on me.
"So there I sat, shivering on the river bank, in the depths of despair. And presently I saw the sky in the east growing pale and I knew that morning was coming. Daylight! That for me meant more hunting and running and jeering, as soon as the sun should show my ridiculous color.