Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories

by J. G. Kernahan; C. Kernahan

For this reason he bought Brooks's cottage, which had a lovely garden. And week by week he purchased this or that to make his cottage pretty and home-like for his bride. It would be difficult to tell how much pleasure Tom found in furnishing this cottage. He would wander in the garden-paths among the rose-bushes, smiling to himself as he thought of the many surprises in store for Anne. But a surprise was in store for him which was not at all pleasant. Anne Grey married some one else.

When Tom heard it, he locked up the pretty cottage, put the key in his pocket, and went to the mill to live. To Anne he spoke no word, though he saw her with her husband coming from the church. In fact, he spoke to no one, but did his work at the mill like a man in a dream. Some there were who tried to break through his stony reserve, but no one succeeded. Tom Lecky had become hard and soured. He remained alone in the mill—except for the mice, and for these he set traps. He caught a great many, and plunged them, trap and all, into a bucket of water. When he found a trap with a mouse in it he would look at the little creature beating itself against its prison, turning rapidly round, forcing its pointed nose between the wire bars, while its long tail hung down through the bars on the other side. He would watch the bright little eyes almost start from their sockets in fear and agony, and yet no feeling of sorrow or pity came into his heart for the tiny captive, and after a time with a smile on his face he would drown the little creature. Could this be the Tom Lecky who had had almost the tenderness of a woman at the sight of pain?

Tom's "living-room" was in the basement of the mill. In it were a table, a chair, a bed, and a cupboard. There was also a hanging bookshelf, with a row of books on it, which Tom never opened now. Through the ceiling of this room descended a ladder white with flour. If you climbed this ladder you found yourself in a room smothered with flour-dust, and your ears were almost deafened by the sound of the machinery overhead which the wind-impelled mill-wheel kept in motion, while the descending stream of ground flour travelled unceasingly down from the grinding-wheel to the bin below. There was a ladder from this room to the one above where the machinery was. There was also a room over this from which you could get outside and regulate the small spiny-looking wheel at the top so as to gain all the force of the wind. All these rooms were festooned with cobwebs quite white with flour. The spiders were white, too, which made them look larger. Even the mice caught in the traps were white with flour.

Now at eight o'clock every evening Tom sat down at the round wooden table, and ate his bread and cheese by the light of a tallow candle inserted in the neck of a bottle. And every night at this time there crept out from a crevice near the cupboard a tiny brown mouse, covered with flour-dust. This little mouse seemed eager and hungry, but it never ventured near the traps where the alluring cheese smelt so deliciously. It would wait for Tom to drop a crumb, and then would dart after it and frisk away into its hole, to return and watch again for another crumb. This happened night after night, till Tom began to watch for the little creature with some eagerness. The sound of its tiny scampering feet on the floor would call up a feeling of pleasure like that which one feels when the knock of a dear friend is heard on the door. But Tom was bitter for all this, and at times he had a savage hope that the little mouse would after all be lured into one of the traps. He did not want to feel tender or kindly any more to anything. He wanted to feel cruel and heartless, because his tenderness had cost him so much pain.

[Illustration: Little girls with flowers]

One autumn evening, when the air was still, and a sweet afterglow rested on the sky like an echo of the sunset, Tom sat thinking in his chair. It was then that he saw something which he never forgot. He saw his small friend watching one of the traps in which another mouse had just been caught. "Now it will shun me," thought Tom. "It has seen what the traps are for." But the tiny brown creature did not run away, as might have been expected, but crept up to the miller as trustfully as ever; indeed, more so, for it came upon the table and nibbled at a piece of bread close to Tom's hand. Then Tom arose, and went towards the trap, and, instead of drowning the captive, opened the door and set it at liberty. From that time he set no more traps. And he fell to thinking with shame that he had not given even a "Good-day" to those who had brought their corn to him to grind, and that when he passed through the village he had spurned children and dogs who had once been favourites of his, and had come to him with the confidence of old playmates. He remembered that some he had known and cared for had passed through sickness and trouble, and he had not gone to cheer them with a single word. And all this because he was unhappy.

And as he pondered with ever-increasing shame, the mouse crept up again and nibbled at his bread. "In spite of what this mouse has seen, it can still trust me," he thought, "and I, because one deceived me, have mistrusted all the world!"

Then he got up and put on his hat, and went out into the twilight. A little breeze had sprung up, and the trees seemed to be whispering together. He seemed to know what they said, though he could not have put it into words. He felt as if his old happiest self were rising once more from the tomb in which his resentment had buried it. It was not the light-hearted self which had once been, but it was the old loving, unselfish Tom for all that. He wandered on aimlessly at first, but afterwards with definite intentions. He would go to Brooks's cottage. He could bear to do so now. He would see how the neglected garden had done without him, and perhaps to-morrow put it to rights.