"What did I tell you?" said the mouse. The miller was in the old room
at the mill for the last night.

"It matters little what you told me," said the miller--"you _taught_ me
so much."

Now from this time the mouse spoke no more to Tom, though he often saw
the little brown creature. It is only to the lonely and sorrowful that
mice and trees and clouds and wind talk much. And the miller was
happy, for had not Anne consented to marry him, and was not the
wedding-day no farther distant now than to-morrow?

Anne visited the mill with her husband a week later, and she said,
"There are many mice here. Why don't you set traps for them?"

"I cannot do _that_," said the miller. "One mouse has taught me more
than all the books I have read. The mice are welcome to what they take
of the grain."

And Anne questioned no more. It was enough for her that she and Tom
were together. So I suppose the little brown mouse, or at least its
descendants, still live on unmolested at the mill.

THE OLD ROCKING-HORSE

He was a very old rocking-horse indeed. His first master, sunny-headed
little Robbie, had grown into a man with a beard, and had given his old
playmate to his sister's children.

These children had in their turn grown into great schoolboys, so the
old horse, like the other toys, was left forsaken in the big nursery at
the top of the house. Broken-down furniture and old magazines had
found their way there, together with travelling-trunks and
portmanteaux. Spiders had spun their webs over the windows, and dust
lay thick on everything.

When little Basil found his way into the old nursery it seemed to him
like an enchanted palace. The spiders and dust only made him think
that somewhere he would find the "sleeping beauty." The litter of toys
and paper and boxes suggested hidden treasure. Once in this room of
delightful possibilities, he did not care how long his mother and aunt
continued their wearisome talks downstairs of what they called "old
times." He stretched himself on a faded couch while he considered
where to begin his operations, and stared at the deeply-cut initials on
the mantelshelf, and regretted that the chimney-piece in the nursery at
home, being stone, did not lend itself to similar delights. With a
sigh he rolled over, and the rocking-horse met his gaze. He looked at
it so long that his eyes blinked. Older people would have said that
just then the old horse _creaked_--as old things h