Boy Blue and His Friends | Page 5

went away.
"Be careful, dear," called Mrs. Mouse, and she peeped through the hole and watched him out of sight.
Mr. Mouse ran across the kitchen floor into the dining-room.
It was very still!
Then he ran into the hall.
"This is too far from the kitchen," he thought.
"I am afraid the babies would have to go to bed hungry in here."
Then he went back into the dining-room.
"This would be a good place for us," he thought.
He looked all around the room.
Where could he find a home?
It must be high up out of the reach of Pussy Cat, and big enough for Mrs. Mouse and her four babies.
What was that in the corner?
It was like a box, only very, very tall.
Mr. Mouse certainly did not know what it was, but I will tell you.
It was Boy Blue's grandfather's clock.
It had stood in that corner a long, long time, but Mr. Mouse had never seen it before.
"I think I could make a good nest on top of that box," he thought.
"Pussy Cat could not get up there, I know."
So Mr. Mouse began to run up the clock.
He heard it ticking very loudly.
"Tick-tock! Tick-tock!" it was saying.
"I wonder what that noise is," he said to himself.
"I hope it doesn't make that noise in the day-time.
"It might keep the babies awake."
He climbed a little higher, looking this way and that.
"I think Mrs. Mouse will like this," he thought.
Just then the clock struck one.
How Mr. Mouse trembled!
He nearly fell off the clock, he was so frightened.
He took one jump down to the floor, and then he ran.
Oh, how he ran! Across the dining-room, across the kitchen, across the pantry, and into his hole he ran!
"Oh, my dear, my dear! what is the matter?" cried his wife. "Did you see the dog? Was the cat chasing you?"
"No, no!" panted Mr. Mouse.
"I was hunting for a house, and I climbed up on a tall box.
"Just as I had found the very place for us, there was an awful noise inside the box."
"That was a clock, my dear," said his wife.
"It tells Boy Blue's mother when to have dinner, and when to put the baby to bed.
"I have heard her telling Boy Blue about it."
"I think it was telling me it was time to go home," said Mr. Mouse, and they both laughed softly so as not to wake up the babies.
The next night Mr. Mouse went house hunting in the barn.
There he found a very good home in a box of grain.
Mistress Mary, quite contrary,?How does your garden grow??With silver bells, and cockle shells,?And pretty maids all in a row.
MISTRESS MARY
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Mary.
She had no brothers and sisters, but she had a dear, good father and mother.
Mary always went to school with her little friends.
She played with them after school and on Saturdays.
One Saturday in winter all the children went coasting down the long hill near the school-house.
Mary took her new red sled and went with them.
Oh, it was such fun to coast down that long hill!
The children ran and laughed and shouted all the way.
They had not been coasting long when Mary fell off her sled right into a snow bank.
That was fun, too, and Mary didn't care one bit.
But when she tried to stand up, it hurt her so it made tears come into her brown eyes.
"Are you hurt very much?" asked Little Boy Blue.
"My foot hurts," said Mary, trying not to cry.
"We'll give you a ride home," said Jack Horner.
So Mary sat on her sled, and Boy Blue and Jack Horner played they were her horses.
They trotted so fast that Mary was soon at home and in her mother's arms.
When the doctor saw Mary's foot he shook his head.
"This little girl has sprained her foot," he said.
"She will have to stay in the house for some time."
I am afraid Mary cried when the doctor said this.
She did not like to stay at home.
She wanted to go to school with all her playmates.
She wanted to go coasting and skating and play in the snow.
In a few days Mary could sit by the window and watch the children.
Then she was not so lonely.
Jack brought home her school books and she studied very hard.
"I want to keep up with my class, Mamma," she said.
So every day Mary and her mother played school together.
Every week Miss Brown came in to see how the little girl was getting along.
Of course the children went to see Mary very often.
They told her everything they had been doing in school.
One day Jack said, "I think it would be good fun to give Mary a surprise party."
"Oh yes," said Alice, "and we can all take something to make her happy."
"We can have the party next Saturday afternoon," said Jack.
"I asked Mary's mother, and she said we could come at