more time passed and it was winter.
all the birds that ever went away had gone. the leaves had fallen from the trees; it had frozen and it had snowed. the wood had been quite white and beautiful and then again sloppy and wretched to look at, for that's what winter is in denmark. the forester seldom went out into the wood since his assistant had arrived. he generally sat in his warm room, in his old arm-chair, making up his accounts and thinking of the old days when he was young and active and never bothered whether it was warm or cold. he was also very fond of talking about that time. and, although he had talked about it more than once or twice before, they forgave him, because he was so old, and listened to him patiently.
jens attended to his work, which was not very heavy in the winter. the forester's daughter spent her time between the kitchen and the larder. the rat-catcher had been and gone, after doing his business and receiving his pay. forty black rats had been drawn from every hole and corner in the barn and threshing-floor, but only two brown ones—and they were quite young still—and no mice. but, as soon as the rat-catcher had gone, the old tom-cat died of sheer old age and laziness. he was buried in the garden with great pomp and ceremony. but, even before he was committed to the grave, jens brought a young cat over from the keeper's; and there was every reason to hope that she was of a different sort from the old one.
the forester, it was true, said that she was the very image of what the old one was when she was young. and that too may have been right enough, for one can't judge youth by old age. this much, in any case, was certain, that she went hunting. the odd man had said that she must have her morning milk and nothing more before she caught a mouse or a rat. and so it stood. whenever she showed herself for the first time, after her morning milk, she was asked:
"where is your mouse or your rat?"
and gradually she grew so used to this that, as soon as she was asked, she ran off and fetched the mouse or the rat, which she had been careful not to eat before. then, as a reward, she received a scrap of bacon, or something else that was left over from breakfast. but, on days when she had no mouse or rat to show, then she received no bacon either. that was as sure as march in lent.
the young lady no longer interested herself in the matter, but left it all to the odd man. whenever she caught sight of the hole in the dining-room wainscot, she sighed and said:
"you naughty, naughty mouse, to abuse my trust in you so shamefully! i was good to you and gave you sugar every day; and you stole the cinnamon. now i have been good to you again and taken away the poison which the rat-catcher put outside your hole. what advantage do you propose to take of me this time? but you can, if you like. i don't trouble about you now. i can't help you if the new cat gets hold of you some day: she is quite a different sort of cat from the old one and she will catch you yet, you'll see. it's your own fault."
when she talked like that, as she often did, it was hard for the little mouse to sit inside the wainscot and listen and not to be able to defend herself. she would so much have liked to tell her young lady that she was not quite so bad as she thought. she would so much have liked to have her little lumps of sugar again. for times were shocking, since the rat-catcher had been. she hardly dared eat a thing, for fear lest there should be a hidden poison in it. and she could hardly go anywhere, because of the new cat.
but she could not talk to the young lady. nor did she dare venture across the barn. she would have liked to talk to her cousin from copenhagen, but, one day when she went through the kitchen-drain, the new cat was sitting at the other end and was within an ace of eating her. so she had to be content with poor fare and a bad conscience.
