For a few moments Dickie Deer Mouse's cousins looked terribly
disappointed. He had told them that his new house had only one chamber.
And each of the three big families had expected to have at least one
bedroom.
The elder cousins gathered in a group and talked in low tones. Dickie
could not hear what they said. He hoped that they were going to bid him
farewell and go back where they came from. But he soon saw that they had
no such idea.
The eldest of all, whom Dickie knew as Cousin Dan'l, said to him
presently:
"Cheer up! We know you'd be sorry not to have us with you during the
winter. So we'll take a look at your chamber. Perhaps it's big enough
for all of us."
Dickie tried to tell Cousin Dan'l Deer Mouse that he was afraid the
chamber would be too crowded with so many in it. But when he opened his
mouth the words, somehow, would not come. And at last he nodded his head
and crept through his doorway, while his cousins followed him one by
one.
The younger cousins pushed and crowded and quarreled, making such a
commotion that Dickie Deer Mouse could hear them plainly, though he was
some distance ahead of them.
"Those youngsters will have to keep still," he said over his shoulder to
the cousin that was nearest him.
Everybody passed the message down the line. And when the youngsters
heard it they began to laugh.
"Tell Cousin Dickie to stop us if he can," they shouted.
Their rude answer reached Dickie Deer Mouse just as he came to a place
in his front hall to which he had paid little heed before. Right at the
spot where he stood the tunnel divided itself into two passages. Before,
he had taken the one on the right. But now something told him to go the
other way. So he turned to the left, still followed closely by the
cousin that was behind him.
The whole procession came trailing after them. And the first thing
Dickie--or anybody else--knew, they all found themselves standing in the
grassy pasture once more, in the gray light of the morning.
They had passed out through the back door of the house, without entering
the chamber at all!
As soon as Dickie's relations saw where they were they looked at one
another in a puzzled fashion.
"What's the matter?" Cousin Dan'l demanded of Dickie. "I followed the
crowd. But I saw no chamber anywhere."
Dickie Deer Mouse didn't know exactly what to say. So he merely shook
his head, hoping that the company would go away.
"Can it be possible that you've lost your bedroom?" Cousin Dan'l Deer
Mouse asked him. "Is it so small that you could have overlooked it?"
"The bedroom's none too big," Dickie replied.
"Then maybe we passed through it without noticing it," his elderly
cousin observed.
"We can't stand around here in the pasture all day, Dan'l," the cousin's
wife complained. "If Mr. Hawk happened to come this way he'd be sure to
see us."
"What do you suggest?" Cousin Dan'l asked Dickie Deer Mouse. "You see
the women are nervous." And he cocked an eye up at the sky, as if he did
not feel any too safe himself when he thought of Mr. Hawk.
"It seems to me," Dickie told him, "that we'd all of us better go back
to our summer homes."
And then, after saying that he hoped everybody would get home without an
accident, and wouldn't meet Mr. Hawk, Dickie Deer Mouse turned towards
the woods and hurried away.
His parting words did not make his numerous cousins feel any happier.
And since they wanted to get out of sight as soon as they could, they
quickly followed Dickie's example and scurried off as fast as they could
go, to spend another day in the summer houses in which they had been
living.
Now, Dickie Deer Mouse had paused as soon as he had reached the rail
fence at the edge of the woods. And unseen by his cousins he peeped back
to find out what they might do.
When the three families scattered in three different directions Dickie
Deer Mouse believed that he was well rid of them.
But by that time it had grown so light that he did not want to show
himself in the pasture, not even long enough to scamper the short
distance from the fence back to the front door of his new house.
So he passed another day in the last year's bird's nest.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]