“Squeak! squeak!” cried a little mouse, just then gliding out of a hole in the wall.
Another followed. They snuffed at the fir-tree and slipped in and out among the branches. “It is horribly cold,” said the little mice. “Don’t you think so, you old fir-tree?”
“I am not old,” responded the fir-tree. “There are many trees much older than I am.”
“How came you here?” questioned the mice, “and what do you know? Tell us about the most delightful place on earth. Have you ever been there? Have you been into the storeroom where cheeses lie on the shelves, and bacon hangs from the ceiling, where one can dance over tallow-candles, where one goes in thin and comes out fat?”
“I know nothing about that,” the tree answered, “but I know the forest, where the sun shines and where the birds sing.”
Then he spoke of his youth and its pleasures. The little mice had never heard anything like it before. They listened with all their ears, and said: “Well, to be sure, how much you have seen! How happy you have been!”
“Happy!” repeated the fir-tree in surprise, and he thought a moment over all he had been saying. “Yes, on the whole, those were pleasant times.”
He then told about the Christmas Eve when he had been decked with toys and candles.
“Oh!” cried the little mice, “how happy you have been, you old fir-tree!”
“I am not old at all,” declared the tree, “and it is only this winter that I left the forest.”