Side by side in the chamber, just under the long, dead grass and the white snow, with a roof formed of tiny roots and loose earth, lay Mr. and Mrs. Mole Cricket.
It was the same chamber in which had lain the little white eggs that the warm sun had hatched, and from it the young crickets had gone out, already valiant, to burrow their own galleries, and seek their own food.
Slumber had gone on in the chamber for many weeks when, at a sudden sound, Mr. Cricket moved. We fancy he was cross at being disturbed. "What's that?" he said.
"Boy Will," answered his wife. "He's digging up the snow to make a snow man, and shouting."
"He'll make us cold," grumbled Mr. Cricket.
"Then we must go to the cavern."
"But we can't—I'm as stiff as a stick."
"I believe I am, too."
The earth that covered their roof was very sandy and loose, when not frozen, and as it was, it yielded readily to persistent thumps such as now fell about it. The snow was soggy—just right for building purposes—and Boy Will, in his enthusiasm, scraped up a shovelful of dirt with the last bit of snow that covered the lodge. His sharp eyes saw something black lying beneath the little dead roots that had in the summer belonged to his forget-me-nots. He took the shovel—it was his mother's stove shovel—and carefully pried the dark bundle up, and with his little red fingers separated it from its wrappings.
"Aha!" he said, and ran into the house. "Look a-here!" he cried as he ran up to his father's desk. "Well, well!" said his father, looking at the objects through gold-bowed spectacles, "that's the same sort of fellow that we teased last summer with a grass blade."