Mouse House

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MOUSE HOUSE

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Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2010

http://www.archive.org/details/mousehouseOOgodd

MOUSE HOUSE

Also by

Rumer Godden

THE FAIRY DOLL IMPUNITY JANE

THE HOUSEWIFE THE DOLLS' HOUSE THE STORY OF HOLLY AND

IVY

CANDY FLOSS MISS HAPPINESS AND MISS FLOWER ST.

JEROME AND THE LION LITTLE PLUM

HOME IS THE SAILOR THE KITCHEN MADONNA OPERATION SIPPACIK THE OLD WOMAN WHO LIVED IN A VINEGAR BOTTLE

MOUSE HOUSE

BY RUMER GODDEN Illustrated

by Adrienne Adams

THE VIKING PRESS

•

NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT © 1957 BY RUMER GODDEN FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1957 BY THE VIKING PRESS, INC. 625 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK 22 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 57-13962 SEN

Fie

1.

670-49148-9

Mice

— Stories

7 8 9 10 11 76 75 74 73 72

PRINTED IN THE

U.S.A.

BY AFFILIATED LITHOGRAPHERS

For

MARY

GROVES,

because Mouse House belonged to her

Tice It

upon a time there was a

was

like a doll's house,

little

mouse house.

but not for

dolls, for

mice. Its walls

were painted

bricks. Its roof

was

red,

with lines for

gray, with painted tiles and

a red chimney. The roof lifted up, and in the [

7

]

--r

house was a

hall

with a front door, a sitting

room, and a bedroom, each with a window.

The wallpaper had a pattern of spots as small as pinheads, and the carpets were pink flannel. In the hall

was a doormat cut from

two inches of tweed. The

sitting

room had a

painted fireplace, two chairs, and a table. In the bedroom

was a tiny looking

glass and a

bed with bedclothes and a blue and white quilt.

At the window were muslin [

8

]

curtains,

and

on each

sill

^

1-

*l

stood thimble-sized pots of gera-

niums; the geraniums were made of scarlet silk.

On

tin-tack pegs on the wall

hung some

dusters no bigger than postage stamps.

Over the front door was a notice that

said,

"MOUSE HOUSE."

Mouse House was given

Mary

to

a girl called

as an Easter present. "It's to keep your

jewelry in," said her father, but head. [

9

]

Mary shook her

"It's

meant

for mice," said Mary, and indeed

there were two mice there already, a he-mouse in the sitting

room and a she-mouse

in the bed-

room. They wore clothes; He-mouse had a suit tie;

She-mouse wore a

dress with a pale blue apron.

They stood on their

with a pale blue ribbon

hind

legs,

and their fur looked just [

10

]

like flannel,

y

their whiskers looked

eyes were as

still

Hke

bristles,

and their

as beads.

"Are you proper mice?" asked Mary. There

was no answer, not

so

much

as a squeak.

He-mouse and She-mouse stayed quite quite, quite

still. [

11

]

still,

Mary was disappointed.

"I

thought mice ran,"

she said.

Most mice

do.

They scamper up and down the

and come into the larder and the cup-

stairs

boards and chmb the table

legs.

They whisk into

holes and run behind the wainscoting.

The

sound of their running can make a rustle and patter like rain, and they go so fast you can

hardly believe you have seen them. That

most mice

is

how

He-mouse and She-

run, but not

mouse.

Mary waited

for

them

to

move— "Even

a tail

or a whisker," said Mary. Sometimes she lifted the roof up quietly to take a sudden peep, but

they were always standing where she had

them;

At put

it

still,

quite, quite

last she took

away on her

left

still.

Mouse House upstairs and chest-of -drawers.

"Don't you want to play with it?" asked her

mother.

"Mice can't play," said Mary, but she was

wrong. [

12

]

f)

r

^' "X> r >-

Far down, below-stairs, a cellar where rubbish

in

was

Mary's house, was

kept,

and

there, be-

hind an old broom in the corner, was another

mouse house. upstairs. It

It

was not elegant

like the

one

was a broken flowerpot made com-

fortable with hay.

I

cannot

tell

you how many

mice lived in it because I was never quick enough to catch them, but

it

was brimful

"This overcrowding in houses

of mice. is

a terrible

problem," Mary's father said as he read the

newspaper. The mice in the flowerpot could have told

him

When

that.

they were

all in it

paw, or a

al-

or a tail hanging out, an

ways some whiskers ear, a

asleep there were

mouse

little

leg.

There was not

an eighth of an an inch to spare— if you want to

know how

small that

is,

and the youngest, a

look on a school ruler—

little

girl

mouse

called

Bonnie, ended up most nights pushed out on the cellar floor.

"She will catch cold," said Mother Mouse.

bad to

lie

out on the stone." [

14

]

"It's

!

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f For the mice, Mouse House was not spoiled at all;

they found

it

far

more convenient without

curtains and a table and chairs.

They used one room for sleeping

in,

the other

as a pantry. "That's better," said Mother Mouse. "It IS better not to

have cheese rind [

56

]

in the beds."

"V; «

#

il

'

/P

..;-'

Father Mouse hid a httle under the doormat the

in

hall.

The scraps clothes

made

of wallpaper

and carpet and bed-

a comfortable nest

wrapped each of the geraniums used them for

dolls. [

57

]

;

the girl mice

in a duster

and

What happened

to

He-mouse and She-mouse?

Mary had Ufted them out

of the house at once

but they did not seem to notice when taken away, or that He-mouse's

tie

She-mouse's apron torn. "And

it

was

it

was

off

and

wasn't you

playing," said Mary.

She tidied them up and sewed them on a pincushion and gave

it

to her [

59

]

aunt for Christmas.

The mice are very happy, particularly Bonnie. She was a into

little

nervous at

first

of being shut

Mouse House, but the door soon came off its

hinges, with the

When

mouse

traffic

going in and out.

her brothers and sisters heard her story

they voted she should sleep

in the bed.

"So that

she can never be pushed out again," said Mother

Mouse.

"But little

if I

hadn't been pushed out," said wise

Bonnie, "we shouldn't have Mouse House." [

61

]

H'^r

How

do

I

know

long time after,

this? Well, one day, not a

all

Mary

hid in the cellar

when she

played hide-and-seek. As she sat there, quite quiet,

the mice children

came hopping

out;

hopping and skipping and scampering and jumping. "Then mice do play," said Mary.

After that she would often steal down to

watch and

listen

and [

look.

62

]

x-tfdS'

"They are

my mice," said Mary.

"I

gave them

Mouse House." Then she stopped and thought, Or did one httle

mouse come and fetch

it?

When she had thought that, guess the

rest,

me, and

I

to

and that tell

is

I

how

think she could she came to

you, the story of

House. [

63

]

tell

Mouse

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