t cornfield.
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 not trouble her head about him, for he was only a
mole. He came and paid them a visit in his black-velvet coat.

'He is so rich and so accomplished,' the field-mouse told her. 'His
house is twenty times larger than mine; he possesses great knowledge,
but he cannot bear the sun and the beautiful flowers, and speaks
slightingly of them, for he has never seen them.'

Thumbelina had to sing to him, so she sang 'Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly
away home!' and other songs so prettily that the mole fell in love
with her; but he did not say anything, he was a very cautious man. A
short time before he had dug a long passage through the ground from
his own house to that of his neighbour; in this he gave the
field-mouse and Thumbelina permission to walk as often as they liked.
But he begged them not to be afraid of the dead bird that lay in the
passage: it was a real bird with beak and feathers, and must have died
a little time ago, and now laid buried just where he had made his
tunnel. The mole took a piece of rotten wood in his mouth, for that
glows like fire in the dark, and went in front, lighting them through
the long dark passage. When they came