Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse | Page 2

If you
climbed this ladder you found yourself in a room smothered with
flour-dust, and your ears were almost deafened by the sound of the
machinery overhead which the wind-impelled mill-wheel kept in
motion, while the descending stream of ground flour travelled
unceasingly down from the grinding-wheel to the bin below. There was

a ladder from this room to the one above where the machinery was.
There was also a room over this from which you could get outside and
regulate the small spiny-looking wheel at the top so as to gain all the
force of the wind. All these rooms were festooned with cobwebs quite
white with flour. The spiders were white, too, which made them look
larger. Even the mice caught in the traps were white with flour.
Now at eight o'clock every evening Tom sat down at the round wooden
table, and ate his bread and cheese by the light of a tallow candle
inserted in the neck of a bottle. And every night at this time there crept
out from a crevice near the cupboard a tiny brown mouse, covered with
flour-dust. This little mouse seemed eager and hungry, but it never
ventured near the traps where the alluring cheese smelt so deliciously.
It would wait for Tom to drop a crumb, and then would dart after it and
frisk away into its hole, to return and watch again for another crumb.
This happened night after night, till Tom began to watch for the little
creature with some eagerness. The sound of its tiny scampering feet on
the floor would call up a feeling of pleasure like that which one feels
when the knock of a dear friend is heard on the door. But Tom was
bitter for all this, and at times he had a savage hope that the little mouse
would after all be lured into one of the traps. He did not want to feel
tender or kindly any more to anything. He wanted to feel cruel and
heartless, because his tenderness had cost him so much pain.
[Illustration: Little girls with flowers]
One autumn evening, when the air was still, and a sweet afterglow
rested on the sky like an echo of the sunset, Tom sat thinking in his
chair. It was then that he saw something which he never forgot. He saw
his small friend watching one of the traps in which another mouse had
just been caught. "Now it will shun me," thought Tom. "It has seen
what the traps are for." But the tiny brown creature did not run away, as
might have been expected, but crept up to the miller as trustfully as
ever; indeed, more so, for it came upon the table and nibbled at a piece
of bread close to Tom's hand. Then Tom arose, and went towards the
trap, and, instead of drowning the captive, opened the door and set it at
liberty. From that time he set no more traps. And he fell to thinking

with shame that he had not given even a "Good-day" to those who had
brought their corn to him to grind, and that when he passed through the
village he had spurned children and dogs who had once been favourites
of his, and had come to him with the confidence of old playmates. He
remembered that some he had known and cared for had passed through
sickness and trouble, and he had not gone to cheer them with a single
word. And all this because he was unhappy.
And as he pondered with ever-increasing shame, the mouse crept up
again and nibbled at his bread. "In spite of what this mouse has seen, it
can still trust me," he thought, "and I, because one deceived me, have
mistrusted all the world!"
Then he got up and put on his hat, and went out into the twilight. A
little breeze had sprung up, and the trees seemed to be whispering
together. He seemed to know what they said, though he could not have
put it into words. He felt as if his old happiest self were rising once
more from the tomb in which his resentment had buried it. It was not
the light-hearted self which had once been, but it was the old loving,
unselfish Tom for all that. He wandered on aimlessly at first, but
afterwards with definite intentions. He would go to Brooks's cottage.
He could bear to do so now. He would see how the neglected garden
had done without him, and perhaps to-morrow put it to rights.
When Tom reached the garden gate (it was a tall wicket-gate through
which you could get a peep at the garden) he undid the padlock, and in
the half-light saw a tall holly-hock stretching itself across the entrance
as if