so ugly that even the
cockchafers would have nothing to say to her. And all the while she
was really the loveliest creature that one could imagine, and as
tender and delicate as a beautiful rose-leaf. During the whole
summer poor little Tiny lived quite alone in the wide forest. She wove
herself a bed with blades of grass, and hung it up under a broad leaf,
to protect herself from the rain. She sucked the honey from the
flowers for food, and drank the dew from their leaves every morning.
So passed away the summer and the autumn, and then came the winter,--the
long, cold winter. All the birds who had sung to her so sweetly
were flown away, and the trees and the flowers had withered. The large
clover leaf under the shelter of which she had lived, was now rolled
together and shrivelled up, nothing remained but a yellow withered
stalk. She felt dreadfully cold, for her clothes were torn, and she
was herself so frail and delicate, that poor little Tiny was nearly
frozen to death. It began to snow too; and the snow-flakes, as they
fell upon her, were like a whole shovelful falling upon one of us, for
we are tall, but she was only an inch high. Then she wrapped herself
up in a dry leaf, but it cracked in the middle and could not keep
her warm, and she shivered with cold. Near the wood in which she had
been living lay a corn-field, but the corn had been cut a long time;
nothing remained but the bare dry stubble standing up out of the
frozen ground. It was to her like struggling through a large wood. Oh!
how she shivered with the cold. She came at last to the door of a
field-mouse, who had a little den under the corn-stubble. There
dwelt the field-mouse in warmth and comfort, with a whole roomful of
corn, a kitchen, and a beautiful dining room. Poor little Tiny stood
before the door just like a little beggar-girl, and begged for a small
piece of barley-corn, for she had been without a morsel to eat for two
days.

"You poor little creature," said the field-mouse, who was really a
good old field-mouse, "come into my warm room and dine with me." She
was very pleased with Tiny, so she said, "You are quite welcome to
stay with me all the winter, if you like; but you must keep my rooms
clean and neat, and tell me stories, for I shall like to hear them
very much." And Tiny did all the field-mouse asked her, and found
herself very comfortable.

"We shall have a visitor soon," said the field-mouse one day;
"my neighbor pays me a visit