imaginable, so soft and
delicate, like the loveliest rose-leaf.

The whole summer poor little Thumbelina lived alone in the great wood.
She plaited a bed for herself of blades of grass, and hung it up under a
clover-leaf, so that she was protected from the rain; she gathered
honey from the flowers for food, and drank the dew on the leaves every
morning. Thus the summer and autumn passed, but then came winter--the
long, cold winter. All the birds who had sung so sweetly about her had
flown away; the trees shed their leaves, the flowers died; the great
clover-leaf under which she had lived curled up, and nothing remained of
it but the withered stalk. She was terribly cold, for her clothes were
ragged, and she herself was so small and thin. Poor little Thumbelina!
she would surely be frozen to death. It began to snow, and every
snow-flake that fell on her was to her as a whole shovelful thrown on
one of us, for we are so big, and she was only an inch high. She wrapt
herself round in a dead leaf, but it was torn in the middle and gave her
no warmth; she was trembling with cold.

Just outside the wood where she was now living lay a great corn-field.
But the corn had been gone a long time; only the dry, bare stubble was
left standing in the frozen ground. This made a forest for her to wander
about in. All at once she came across the door of a field-mouse, who had
a little hole under a corn-stalk. There the mouse lived warm and snug,
with a store-room full of corn, a splendid kitchen and dining-room. Poor
little Thumbelina went up to the door and begged for a little piece of
barley, for she had not had anything to eat for the last two days.

'Poor little creature!' said the field-mouse, for she was a kind-hearted
old thing at the bottom. 'Come into my warm room and have some dinner
with me.'

As Thumbelina pleased her, she said: 'As far as I am concerned you may
spend the winter with me; but you must keep my room clean and tidy, and
tell me stories, for I like that very much.'

And Thumbelina did all that the kind old field-mouse asked, and did it
remarkably well too.

'Now I am expecting a visitor,' said the field-mouse; 'my neighbour
comes to call on me once a week. He is in better circumstances than I
am, has great, big rooms, and wears a fine black-velvet coat. If you
could only marry him, you would be well provided for. But he is blind.
You must tell him all the prettiest stories you know.'

But Thumbelina did no