Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse | Page 2

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 barring the way. "The garden is ours--mine and the rest of the flowers," it seemed to say. "Why do you come to disturb our peace?--you who have forsaken us."
And the miller's heart answered, "If one who has forsaken you should come back, would you not receive him?" And