Chapter 16

A MIDNIGHT MEAL



DOWN in the cellar of the farmhouse a fat couple known as Mr. and Mrs. Moses Mouse crept out of a hole under the pantry floor and ran down a post to the cellar bottom.

"Things have come to a pretty pass!" Mr. Mouse grumbled. "Mrs. Green never did leave more than a crumb or two in the pantry where a fellow could get it. And since Miss Snooper came to live here there's less to eat than ever."

Mrs. Mouse nodded her head somewhat dolefully.

"Do you remember, Moses," she said to her husband, "what delicious bits of stale cheese Mrs. Green used to serve for us here in the cellar, stuck on a short piece of wire? To be sure, she was somewhat thoughtless--the way she left that dangerous loop caught back, so it would snap over and catch you behind the ears if you weren't careful. But you were always very skillful at avoiding that."

"Ah! Those were happy days--or, I should say, nights!" Mr. Mouse exclaimed with a sigh. "It makes me sad just to think of that fine, old, stale, moldy cheese."

"I suppose Mrs. Green gives it all to that horrid Miss Snooper now," said Mrs. Mouse, as she climbed to a shelf and looked at the labels on several jars of jam and jelly that stood there in a row.

Moses Mouse watched her hopefully. Being quite plump, he was a bit lazy. And he did not care to scramble up to a shelf for nothing.

"There isn't one without a cover, is there?" he inquired.

"No!" his wife replied.

"There isn't one with a little sweetness oozing down the side of it, is there?" he asked her.

"No!" said Mrs. Mouse. "Not one! I suppose Miss Snooper has licked them all clean."

"That disagreeable Miss Snooper has spoiled everything for us," Moses Mouse declared. And for a fat gentleman he looked oddly unhappy.

"I don't know what we'll do for our supper," he whined. He always whined when he was hungry.

"There's that chunk of putty that Farmer Green left in the woodshed," his wife reminded him.

"Ugh!" Moses Mouse made a wry face. "We've dined upon that for the last three nights. And I never did like putty, anyhow. I wish that snooping Miss Snooper had to eat it." His mournful eyes roved about the cellar until they rested on something in a dark corner. "What's in that box over there?" he asked Mrs. Mouse.

"I don't know," she answered.

"Well--go and see, then!" he snapped. "I'm so faint I can scarcely stand."

Mrs. Mouse always humored Moses when he was hungry. She knew that he was never fretful after he had eaten a good meal. So her feet twinkled across the cellar floor and she disappeared inside the box.

Not hearing