He trotted off, looking back contemptuously at the five balls already rolled up again.
"Dear, dear! how silly they are to be sure," he said, when he found himself out on the grass. "Why, it's certainly summer again! The sunshine's so bright and warm, the birds are chirping so merrily. I feel quite brisk. I think I'll take a ramble over the common to the wood where our cousins the squirrels live, and hear what they have to say about it."
He cocked his ears and peeped about with his little sparkling eyes. Suddenly he caught sight of something white at the foot of one of the old trees. It was Cicely Gray in her summer flannel, which had been pulled out of the wardrobe again to do honour to St. Martin.
"Good morning, little dormouse," she said in her pretty soft voice, "what are you doing out of your nest in late November? Do you think summer's come back again already, my little man? If so, you've made a great mistake. Take warning, and don't stray far from your home, or you may find yourself in a sad plight. This lovely weather can't last many days."
Fuzz looked at her.
"Thank you, miss," he replied, for, you see, he understood human talk, though it is to be doubted if Cicely understood him. "She must surely know," he reflected wisely, "and perhaps after all mamma was in the right."
So he scampered in to the nest again and rolled himself up beside the others.
That very evening the wind changed; the cold set in in earnest, and for three months it was really severe.
"I saw a little dormouse at the corner of the common yesterday," said Cicely the next morning. "I advised him to go home again; he had come out by mistake, thinking winter was over."