between
his hind legs and combs it with his teeth. It is quite worth it.

* * * * *

[Illustration: THE HARVEST MOUSE SAT ON THE TOP OF A STALK AND NIBBLED HIS
SUPPER.]

The harvest mouse sat on the top of a cornstalk and nibbled his supper.
His first summer had been most successful. So much had been crowded into
it that he could only dimly remember the oat-stack in which he was born.
Even the hedgerow seemed difficult to recall. He had lived in that two
months, next door to the wood-mouse, and from him he may have learnt
something of the art of nest-building. Then he had wandered abroad. The
field, on the left of the hedgerow as you walk westward, was, when he
entered it, tinged with uncertain green,--a sand-stained green like that
of shallow sea. Yet there was cover enough for him. In a week's time, the
sprouting corn had got the mastery, shrouding with its exquisite mantle
the humble mother soil it seemed ashamed of; then, as if it had imprisoned
the sunbeams, it turned to golden yellow, and now, wearying of conquest,
had borrowed the copper radiance of a dying day.

[Illustration: THE WOOD-MOUSE.]

It was with the first budding and ripening of the young corn that the
harvest mouse tasted the true joy of living. In the hedgerow it had
been mere existence; for there had been no real scope for his tail. The
grasping portion of it could only encircle the tiniest twigs. Here, Nature
herself seemed to have been at pains to suit him. Whichever way he looked,
there stretched before him long yellow avenues of pygmy trees. Had they
been passed through a gauge, they could not have better suited his
proportions. He could whip his tail round any one of them. As he travelled
from ear to ear, there was always something handy to grip on to. To reach
the top of a cornstalk from the ground took him just two seconds and a
half. He ran up it, he did not condescend to climb. Once among the ears,
he travelled with little jumps, sometimes waiting for the wind to sway the
corn, and help him, sometimes boldly leaping from the summit, and trusting
confidently to his tiny hands and feet to pull him up a foot or so below.
Even if he blundered to earth he had nothing to fear, for, of all the
denizens of the cornfield, he alone could thread the avenues in perfect
silence.

[Illustration: IN THE FIRST BUDDING AND RIPENING OF THE WHEAT HE TASTED
THE TRUE JOY OF LIVING.]

[Illustration: SOMETIMES WAITING FOR