62 Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales
up in a withered leaf, but it gave her no warmth, she shuddereq
with cold.
Close outside the wood, on the skirt of which Tommelise hag
been living, lay a large corn-field, but the corn had been carrieg
away long ago, leaving only the dry, naked stubble standing up from
the hard-frozen earth. It was like another wood to Tommelise
and oh, how she shivered with cold as she made her way through |
At last she came past the field-mouse’s door ; for the field-mouse
wad made herself a little hole under the stubble, and there she
dwelt snugly and comfortably, having a room full of corn, and a
neat kitchen and store-chamber besides. Poor Tommelise stood
At the door and begged for a little piece of a barley-corn, for she
had had nothing to eat during two whole days.
« Poor little thing!” said the field-mouse, who was indeed a
thoroughly good-natured old creature, “ come into my warm room
and dine with me.”
She soon took a great liking to Tommelise, and said, “ You
may dwell with me all the winter if you will, but keep my
room clean and neat, and tell me stories, for I love stories
dearly.”
And Tommelise did all that the kind old field-mouse required
of her, and was made very comfortable in her new abode.
« We shall have a visitor presently,” observed the field-mouse
“my next-door neighbour comes to see me once evety week. He
is better off than I am, has large rooms in his house, and wears
a coat of such beautiful black velvet. It would be a capital thing
for you if you could secure him for your husband, but uf-
fortunately he is blind, he cannot see you. You must tell him
the prettiest stories you know.”
But Tommelise did not care at all about pleasing their neigh-
hour Mr. Mole, nor did she wish to marry him. He came in his
black-velvet suit. He was very rich and learned, and the field-
mouse declared his house was twenty times larger than hers. But
the sun and the pretty flowers he could not endure; he wé>
always abusing them, though he had never seen either. Tommelis®
was called upon to sing for his amusement, and by the time she
had sung © Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home !” and «The 7%
St Orders Grey.” the mole had quite fallen in love with her tho%"
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