Chapter 19

THE WRONG TURN

For a few moments Dickie Deer Mouse's cousins looked terribly disappointed. He had told them that his new house had only one chamber. And each of the three big families had expected to have at least one bedroom.

The elder cousins gathered in a group and talked in low tones. Dickie could not hear what they said. He hoped that they were going to bid him farewell and go back where they came from. But he soon saw that they had no such idea.

The eldest of all, whom Dickie knew as Cousin Dan'l, said to him presently:

"Cheer up! We know you'd be sorry not to have us with you during the winter. So we'll take a look at your chamber. Perhaps it's big enough for all of us."

Dickie tried to tell Cousin Dan'l Deer Mouse that he was afraid the chamber would be too crowded with so many in it. But when he opened his mouth the words, somehow, would not come. And at last he nodded his head and crept through his doorway, while his cousins followed him one by one.

The younger cousins pushed and crowded and quarreled, making such a commotion that Dickie Deer Mouse could hear them plainly, though he was some distance ahead of them.

"Those youngsters will have to keep still," he said over his shoulder to the cousin that was nearest him.

Everybody passed the message down the line. And when the youngsters heard it they began to laugh.

"Tell Cousin Dickie to stop us if he can," they shouted.

Their rude answer reached Dickie Deer Mouse just as he came to a place in his front hall to which he had paid little heed before. Right at the spot where he stood the tunnel divided itself into two passages. Before, he had taken the one on the right. But now something told him to go the other way. So he turned to the left, still followed closely by the cousin that was behind him.

The whole procession came trailing after them. And the first thing Dickie--or anybody else--knew, they all found themselves standing in the grassy pasture once more, in the gray light of the morning.

They had passed out through the back door of the house, without entering the chamber at all!

As soon as Dickie's relations saw where they were they looked at one another in a puzzled fashion.

"What's the matter?" Cousin Dan'l demanded of Dickie. "I followed the crowd. But I saw no chamber anywhere."

Dickie Deer Mouse didn't know exactly what to say. So he merely shook his head, hoping that the company would go away.

"Can it be possible that you've lost your bedroom?" Cousin Dan'l Deer Mouse asked him. "Is it so small that you could have overlooked it?"

"The bedroom's none too big," Dickie replied.

"Then maybe we passed through it without noticing it," his elderly cousin observed.

"We can't stand