I had a great mind to dig down into the hole with a stick, and see what had become of the caterpillar. But I thought it wasn’t quite fair to take the roof off a man’s house to find out how he cooks his beef for dinner; so I sat still and wondered whether they would eat him all up or whether they would leave any for Tuesday; then I went home to my own dinner.
—Helen Hunt Jackson.
MY ANT’S COW
My Ant lives in the country and keeps a cow. I am ashamed to say that, although I have always known she was a most interesting person, I never went to see her until last week.
I am afraid I should not have gone then, if I had not found an account of her, and her house, and her cow, in a book which I was reading.
“Dear me,” said I, “and there she has been living so near me all this time, and I never have been to call on her.”
To tell the truth, it was much worse than that; I had often met her in the street, and had taken such a dislike to her looks that I always brushed by as quickly as possible without speaking to her.
I had great difficulty in finding her house, though it is quite large. She belongs to a very peculiar family; they prefer to live in the dark; so they have no windows in their houses, only doors; and the doors are nothing but holes in the roof.