During the whole summer poor little Thumbelina lived quite alone in the wide forest. She wove herself a bed with blades of grass, and hung it under a broad leaf to protect herself from the rain. She sucked honey from the flowers for food, and drank the dew from the leaves every morning.
So passed away the summer and the autumn, and then came the winter,—the long cold winter. All the birds who had sung to her so sweetly had flown away, and the trees and flowers had withered. The large shamrock under the shelter of which she had lived shriveled up, leaving nothing but a yellow, withered stalk. She was dreadfully cold, for her clothes were thin and torn, and she was herself so frail and delicate that she nearly froze to death. It began to snow, too, and the snowflakes as they fell upon her were like a whole shovelful falling upon one of us, for we are tall, but she was only an inch high. She wrapped herself in a dry leaf, but it cracked in the middle and gave her no warmth, and she shivered with cold. [[88]]
Close to the wood in which she was living was a large cornfield, but the corn had been cut a long time; nothing remained but the bare, dry stubble, standing up out of the frozen ground. It was to her like wandering about in a large wood. Oh, how she shivered with cold! All at once she came to the door of a field mouse who had a little den under the corn stubble. There lived the field mouse in warmth and comfort, with a storeroom full of corn and a splendid kitchen and dining room. Poor Thumbelina stood before the door just like a little beggar girl, and asked for a little piece of barleycorn, [[89]]for she had been without a morsel to eat for two days.
“You poor little creature,” said the field mouse, for she was a good, kind-hearted old mouse; “come into my warm room and dine with me.”
Then she was pleased with Thumbelina; so she said, “You are quite welcome to stay with me all winter if you like; but you must keep my room clean and neat, and tell me stories, for I like very much to hear them.”
And Thumbelina did all that the field mouse asked her, and found herself very comfortable.
“To-night I expect a visitor,” said the field mouse one day. “My neighbor pays me a visit once a week. He is better off than I am; he has large rooms, and wears a beautiful black velvet coat. If you could only have him for a husband, you would be well provided for indeed. But he is blind. You must tell him some of your prettiest stories.”
Thumbelina had no interest in this neighbor, for he was a mole. However, he came [[90]]and paid them a visit, dressed in his black velvet coat.
“He is very rich and learned,” the field mouse told her, “and his house is twenty times as large as mine.”