"'Roots and moles, where'er they're found,
Like to burrow in the ground.'"
"Oh! yes, you good Tomty, we will remember!" cried the twins. "And we will turn them all back again as quickly as we can."
"Well, Missies, you may do that," replied Tomty, "though it's all one now to them plants if they're on their heads or their heels. But Miss Brighteyes," he continued, turning to the elder mouse, who was looking on with an air of superior wisdom: "it's not my place to speak about the little ladies' clothes, Miss, but whatever will Mrs. Posset say when she sees your frock? and the barn-yard gate open, too, and the fowls all over the place!"
Brighteyes hung down her head and blushed as red as her petticoat: then, without saying a word, she turned away, and walked slowly toward the house.
Yes, she had been very naughty, much naughtier than the twins, whom she had been blaming; and now she would go directly in to Mrs. Posset and tell her all about it, and say she was very sorry.
That was what she thought as she walked along, and that was what she meant to do, doubtless; but dear me! sometimes I think that you people on the earth never do what you mean to do. I know a gentleman in London, if you will believe it, who has been trying for five years to see the sun rise. Every night when he goes to bed he says, "Aha! to-morrow morning I shall be up bright and early, sir! Want to see the sun rise. Haven't seen it since I was a boy. Ha! ha! ha!" and then he goes to bed, and knows nothing till nine o'clock the next morning, when the sunbeams flirt gold-dust into his eyes and wake him up. Then he rubs his eyes, and says "Bless me! overslept myself again, hey? well, I never was so sleepy before in my life! the sun will have to see me rise this morning, hey? ha! ha! ha!"
Yes, that is the way with you all, and that was the way with Brighteyes that day. I did but turn away from the mirror for five minutes, to chat with a passing meteor, and ask him how his grandmother was; and when I turned back, where was that bright-eyed mouse but up at the very top of a tree: trying with all her might to catch a small cat, the very same cat which the dogs had been chasing an hour before.
"Dear little Pusscat!" cried Brighteyes in her most winning tones. "I wouldn't hurt you for the world. Do come, and let me take you down, and you shall be my own dear little pet, and I will love you very much indeed!" and she stretched out one arm toward the kitten, while the other clasped a branch of the tree.
The kitten looked hard at her, and on the whole seemed to approve of her, for it advanced slowly, and finally allowed itself to be captured. Yes, that was very nice; but how about getting down?