The houses are built in the shape of a mound, and are not more than ten inches high. They are built out of old bits of wood, dead leaves, straw, old bones; in short, every sort of old thing that they find, they stick in the walls of their houses. Their best rooms are all down cellar; and dark enough they must be on a rainy day, when the doors are always kept shut tight.
But I ought to have told you about my Ant herself before I told you about her house. When you hear what an odd person she is, you will not be surprised that she lives in such an outlandish house.
To begin with, I must tell you that she belongs to a family that never does any work.
You’d never suppose so, to see her. I really think she is the queerest-looking creature I ever met.
In the first place, her skin is of a dark brown color, darker than an Indian’s, and she has six legs. Of course she can walk three times as fast as if she had only two,—but I would rather go slower and be more like other people.
She has frightful jaws, with which she does all sorts of things besides eating. She uses them for scissors, tweezers, pickaxes, knife and fork, and in case of a battle, for swords.
Then she has growing out of the front part of her head two long slender horns, which she keeps moving about all the time, and with which she touches everything she wishes to understand.