Short Fiction
Author: Beatrix Potter
Date: 2023-01-12T20:47:41+00:00
Keywords: Rabbits -- Juvenile fiction; Squirrels -- Juvenile fiction; Mice -- Juvenile fiction; Christmas -- Juvenile fiction; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Theft -- Juvenile fiction; Dogs -- Juvenile fiction; Cats -- Juvenile fiction; Frogs -- Juvenile fiction; Kittens -- Juvenile fiction; Foxes -- Juvenile fiction; Ducks -- Juvenile fiction
Description: A collection of Beatrix Potter’s short stories for children, ordered by date of publication.
Publisher: Standard Ebooks

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The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.

They lived with their Mother in a sandbank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree.

“Now my dears,” said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, “you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden.”

“Your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.”

“Now run along, and don’t get into mischief. I am going out.”

Then old Mrs. Rabbit took a basket and her umbrella, and went through the wood to the baker’s. She bought a loaf of brown bread and five currant buns.

Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail, who were good little bunnies, went down the lane to gather blackberries;

But Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor’s garden.

And squeezed under the gate!

First he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes;

And then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley.

But round the end of a cucumber frame, whom should he meet but Mr. McGregor!

Mr. McGregor was on his hands and knees planting out young cabbages, but he jumped up and ran after Peter, waving a rake and calling out, “Stop thief!”

Peter was most dreadfully frightened; he rushed all over the garden, for he had forgotten the way back to the gate.

He lost one of his shoes among the cabbages, and the other shoe amongst the potatoes.

After losing them, he ran on four legs and went faster, so that I think he might have got away altogether if he had not unfortunately run into a gooseberry net, and got caught by the large buttons on his jacket. It was a blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new.

Peter gave himself up for lost, and shed big tears; but his sobs were overheard by some friendly sparrows, who flew to him in great excitement, and implored him to exert himself.

Mr. McGregor came up with a sieve, which he intended to pop upon the top of Peter; but Peter wriggled out just in time, leaving his jacket behind him.

And rushed into the tool-shed, and jumped into a can. It would have been a beautiful thing to hide in, if it had not had so much water in it.

Mr. McGregor was quite sure that Peter was somewhere in the tool-shed, perhaps hidden underneath a flowerpot. He began to turn them over carefully, looking under each.

Presently Peter sneezed—“Kertyschoo!” Mr. McGregor was after him in no time.

And tried to put his foot upon Peter, who jumped out of a window, upsetting three plants. The window was too small for Mr. McGregor, and he was tired of running after Peter. He went back to his work.

Peter sat down to rest; he was out of breath and trembling with fright, and he had not the least idea which way to go. Also he was very damp with sitting in that can.

After a time he began to wander about, going lippity—lippity—not very fast, and looking all round.

He found a door in a wall; but it was locked, and there was no room for a fat little rabbit to squeeze underneath.

An old mouse was running in and out over the stone doorstep, carrying peas and beans to her family in the wood. Peter asked her the way to the gate, but she had such a large pea in her mouth that she could not answer. She only shook her head at him. Peter began to cry.

Then he tried to find his way straight across the garden, but he became more and more puzzled. Presently, he came to a pond where Mr. McGregor filled his water-cans. A white cat was staring at some goldfish, she sat very, very still, but now and then the tip of her tail twitched as if it were alive. Peter thought it best to go away without speaking to her; he had heard about cats from his cousin, little Benjamin Bunny.

He went back towards the tool-shed, but suddenly, quite close to him, he heard the noise of a hoe—scr‑r‑ritch, scratch, scratch, scritch. Peter scuttered underneath the bushes. But presently, as nothing happened, he came out, and climbed upon a wheelbarrow and peeped over. The first thing he saw was Mr. McGregor hoeing onions. His back was turned towards Peter, and beyond him was the gate!

Peter got down very quietly off the wheelbarrow; and started running as fast as he could go, along a straight walk behind some black-currant bushes.

Mr. McGregor caught sight of him at the corner, but Peter did not care. He slipped underneath the gate, and was safe at last in the wood outside the garden.

Mr. McGregor hung up the little jacket and the shoes for a scarecrow to frighten the blackbirds.

Peter never stopped running or looked behind him till he got home to the big fir-tree.

He was so tired that he flopped down upon the nice soft sand on the floor of the rabbit-hole and shut his eyes. His mother was busy cooking; she wondered what he had done with his clothes. It was the second little jacket and pair of shoes that Peter had lost in a fortnight!

I am sorry to say that Peter was not very well during the evening.

His mother put him to bed, and made some camomile tea; and she gave a dose of it to Peter!

“One tablespoonful to be taken at bedtime.”

But Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper.

The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin

This is a Tale about a tail—a tail that belonged to a little red squirrel, and his name was Nutkin.

He had a brother called Twinkleberry, and a great many cousins: they lived in a wood at the edge of a lake.

In the middle of the lake there is an island covered with trees and nut bushes; and amongst those trees stands a hollow oak-tree, which is the house of an owl who is called Old Brown.

One autumn when the nuts were ripe, and the leaves on the hazel bushes were golden and green—Nutkin and Twinkleberry and all the other little squirrels came out of the wood, and down to the edge of the lake.

They made little rafts out of twigs, and they paddled away over the water to Owl Island to gather nuts.

Each squirrel had a little sack and a large oar, and spread out his tail for a sail.

They also took with them an offering of three fat mice as a present for Old Brown, and put them down upon his doorstep.

Then Twinkleberry and the other little squirrels each made a low bow, and said politely—

“Old Mr. Brown, will you favour us with permission to gather nuts upon your island?”

But Nutkin was excessively impertinent in his manners. He bobbed up and down like a little red cherry, singing—

“Riddle me, riddle me, rot-tot-tote!
A little wee man, in a red red coat!
A staff in his hand, and a stone in his throat;
If you’ll tell me this riddle, I’ll give you a groat.”

Now this riddle is as old as the hills; Mr. Brown paid no attention whatever to Nutkin.

He shut his eyes obstinately and went to sleep.

The squirrels filled their little sacks with nuts, and sailed away home in the evening.

But next morning they all came back again to Owl Island; and Twinkleberry and the others brought a fine fat mole, and laid it on the stone in front of Old Brown’s doorway, and said—

“Mr. Brown, will you favour us with your gracious permission to gather some more nuts?”

But Nutkin, who had no respect, began to dance up and down, tickling old Mr. Brown with a nettle and singing—

“Old Mr. B! Riddle-me-ree!
Hitty Pitty within the wall,
Hitty Pitty without the wall;
If you touch Hitty Pitty,
Hitty Pitty will bite you!”

Mr. Brown woke up suddenly and carried the mole into his house.

He shut the door in Nutkin’s face. Presently a little thread of blue smoke from a wood fire came up from the top of the tree, and Nutkin peeped through the keyhole and sang—

“A house full, a hole full!
And you cannot gather a bowl-full!”

The squirrels searched for nuts all over the island and filled their little sacks.

But Nutkin gathered oak-apples—yellow and scarlet—and sat upon a beech-stump playing marbles, and watching the door of old Mr. Brown.

On the third day the squirrels got up very early and went fishing; they caught seven fat minnows as a present for Old Brown.

They paddled over the lake and landed under a crooked chestnut tree on Owl Island.

Twinkleberry and six other little squirrels each carried a fat minnow; but Nutkin, who had no nice manners, brought no present at all. He ran in front, singing—

“The man in the wilderness said to me,
“How many strawberries grow in the sea?”
I answered him as I thought good—
“As many red herrings as grow in the wood.”

But old Mr. Brown took no interest in riddles—not even when the answer was provided for him.

On the fourth day the squirrels brought a present of six fat beetles, which were as good as plums in plum-pudding for Old Brown. Each beetle was wrapped up carefully in a dock-leaf, fastened with a pine-needle pin.

But Nutkin sang as rudely as ever—

“Old Mr. B! riddle-me-ree
Flour of England, fruit of Spain,
Met together in a shower of rain;
Put in a bag tied round with a string,
If you’ll tell me this riddle, I’ll give you a ring!”

Which was ridiculous of Nutkin, because he had not got any ring to give to Old Brown.

The other squirrels hunted up and down the nut bushes; but Nutkin gathered robin’s pincushions off a briar bush, and stuck them full of pine-needle pins.

On the fifth day the squirrels brought a present of wild honey; it was so sweet and sticky that they licked their fingers as they put it down upon the stone. They had stolen it out of a bumble bees’ nest on the tippitty top of the hill.

But Nutkin skipped up and down, singing—

“Hum-a-bum! buzz! buzz! Hum-a-bum buzz!
As I went over Tipple-tine
I met a flock of bonny swine;
Some yellow-nacked, some yellow backed!
They were the very bonniest swine
That e’er went over Tipple-tine.”

Old Mr. Brown turned up his eyes in disgust at the impertinence of Nutkin.

But he ate up the honey!

The squirrels filled their little sacks with nuts.

But Nutkin sat upon a big flat rock, and played ninepins with a crab apple and green fir-cones.

On the sixth day, which was Saturday, the squirrels came again for the last time; they brought a new-laid egg in a little rush basket as a last parting present for Old Brown.

But Nutkin ran in front laughing, and shouting—

“Humpty Dumpty lies in the beck,
With a white counterpane round his neck,
Forty doctors and forty wrights,
Cannot put Humpty Dumpty to rights!”

Now old Mr. Brown took an interest in eggs; he opened one eye and shut it again. But still he did not speak.

Nutkin became more and more impertinent—

“Old Mr. B! Old Mr. B!
Hickamore, Hackamore, on the King’s kitchen door;
All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men,
Couldn’t drive Hickamore, Hackamore,
Off the King’s kitchen door.”

Nutkin danced up and down like a sunbeam; but still Old Brown said nothing at all.

Nutkin began again—

“Arthur O’Bower has broken his band,
He comes roaring up the land!
The King of Scots with all his power,
Cannot turn Arthur of the Bower!”

Nutkin made a whirring noise to sound like the wind, and he took a running jump right onto the head of Old Brown! …

Then all at once there was a flutterment and a scufflement and a loud “Squeak!”

The other squirrels scuttered away into the bushes.

When they came back very cautiously, peeping round the tree—there was Old Brown sitting on his doorstep, quite still, with his eyes closed, as if nothing had happened.

But Nutkin was in his waistcoat pocket!

This looks like the end of the story; but it isn’t.

Old Brown carried Nutkin into his house, and held him up by the tail, intending to skin him; but Nutkin pulled so very hard that his tail broke in two, and he dashed up the staircase and escaped out of the attic window.

And to this day, if you meet Nutkin up a tree and ask him a riddle, he will throw sticks at you, and stamp his feet and scold, and shout—

“Cuck‑cuck‑cuck‑cur‑r‑r‑cuck‑k‑k!”

The Tailor of Gloucester

“I’ll be at charges for a looking-glass; and entertain a score or two of tailors.”

Richard III

My dear Freda,

Because you are fond of fairytales, and have been ill, I have made you a story all for yourself—a new one that nobody has read before.

And the queerest thing about it is—that I heard it in Gloucestershire, and that it is true—at least about the tailor, the waistcoat, and the “No more twist!”

Christmas, 1901

In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets—when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta—there lived a tailor in Gloucester.

He sat in the window of a little shop in Westgate Street, cross-legged on a table, from morning till dark.

All day long while the light lasted he sewed and snippeted, piecing out his satin and pompadour, and lutestring; stuffs had strange names, and were very expensive in the days of the Tailor of Gloucester.

But although he sewed fine silk for his neighbours, he himself was very, very poor—a little old man in spectacles, with a pinched face, old crooked fingers, and a suit of threadbare clothes.

He cut his coats without waste, according to his embroidered cloth; they were very small ends and snippets that lay about upon the table—“Too narrow breadths for nought—except waistcoats for mice,” said the tailor.

One bitter cold day near Christmastime the tailor began to make a coat—a coat of cherry-coloured corded silk embroidered with pansies and roses, and a cream coloured satin waistcoat—trimmed with gauze and green worsted chenille—for the Mayor of Gloucester.

The tailor worked and worked, and he talked to himself. He measured the silk, and turned it round and round, and trimmed it into shape with his shears; the table was all littered with cherry-coloured snippets.

“No breadth at all, and cut on the cross; it is no breadth at all; tippets for mice and ribbons for mobs! for mice!” said the Tailor of Gloucester.

When the snowflakes came down against the small leaded windowpanes and shut out the light, the tailor had done his day’s work; all the silk and satin lay cut out upon the table.

There were twelve pieces for the coat and four pieces for the waistcoat; and there were pocket flaps and cuffs, and buttons all in order. For the lining of the coat there was fine yellow taffeta; and for the buttonholes of the waistcoat, there was cherry-coloured twist. And everything was ready to sew together in the morning, all measured and sufficient—except that there was wanting just one single skein of cherry-coloured twisted silk.

The tailor came out of his shop at dark, for he did not sleep there at nights; he fastened the window and locked the door, and took away the key. No one lived there at night but little brown mice, and they run in and out without any keys!

For behind the wooden wainscots of all the old houses in Gloucester, there are little mouse staircases and secret trapdoors; and the mice run from house to house through those long narrow passages; they can run all over the town without going into the streets.

But the tailor came out of his shop, and shuffled home through the snow. He lived quite near by in College Court, next the doorway to College Green; and although it was not a big house, the tailor was so poor he only rented the kitchen.

He lived alone with his cat; it was called Simpkin.

Now all day long while the tailor was out at work, Simpkin kept house by himself; and he also was fond of the mice, though he gave them no satin for coats!

“Miaw?” said the cat when the tailor opened the door. “Miaw?”

The tailor replied—“Simpkin, we shall make our fortune, but I am worn to a ravelling. Take this groat (which is our last fourpence) and Simpkin, take a china pipkin; buy a penn’orth of bread, a penn’orth of milk and a penn’orth of sausages. And oh, Simpkin, with the last penny of our fourpence buy me one penn’orth of cherry-coloured silk. But do not lose the last penny of the fourpence, Simpkin, or I am undone and worn to a thread-paper, for I have no more twist.”

Then Simpkin again said, “Miaw?” and took the groat and the pipkin, and went out into the dark.

The tailor was very tired and beginning to be ill. He sat down by the hearth and talked to himself about that wonderful coat.

“I shall make my fortune—to be cut bias—the Mayor of Gloucester is to be married on Christmas Day in the morning, and he hath ordered a coat and an embroidered waistcoat—to be lined with yellow taffeta—and the taffeta sufficeth; there is no more left over in snippets than will serve to make tippets for mice—”

Then the tailor started; for suddenly, interrupting him, from the dresser at the other side of the kitchen came a number of little noises—

Tip tap, tip tap, tip tap tip!

“Now what can that be?” said the Tailor of Gloucester, jumping up from his chair. The dresser was covered with crockery and pipkins, willow pattern plates, and teacups and mugs.

The tailor crossed the kitchen, and stood quite still beside the dresser, listening, and peering through his spectacles. Again from under a teacup, came those funny little noises—

Tip tap, tip tap, Tip tap tip!

“This is very peculiar,” said the Tailor of Gloucester; and he lifted up the teacup which was upside down.

Out stepped a little live lady mouse, and made a curtsey to the tailor! Then she hopped away down off the dresser, and under the wainscot.

The tailor sat down again by the fire, warming his poor cold hands, and mumbling to himself—

“The waistcoat is cut out from peach-coloured satin—tambour stitch and rosebuds in beautiful floss silk. Was I wise to entrust my last fourpence to Simpkin? One-and-twenty buttonholes of cherry-coloured twist!”

But all at once, from the dresser, there came other little noises:

Tip tap, tip tap, tip tap tip!

“This is passing extraordinary!” said the Tailor of Gloucester, and turned over another teacup, which was upside down.

Out stepped a little gentleman mouse, and made a bow to the tailor!

And then from all over the dresser came a chorus of little tappings, all sounding together, and answering one another, like watch-beetles in an old worm-eaten window-shutter—

Tip tap, tip tap, tip tap tip!

And out from under teacups and from under bowls and basins, stepped other and more little mice who hopped away down off the dresser and under the wainscot.

The tailor sat down, close over the fire, lamenting—“One-and-twenty buttonholes of cherry-coloured silk! To be finished by noon of Saturday: and this is Tuesday evening. Was it right to let loose those mice, undoubtedly the property of Simpkin? Alack, I am undone, for I have no more twist!”

The little mice came out again, and listened to the tailor; they took notice of the pattern of that wonderful coat. They whispered to one another about the taffeta lining, and about little mouse tippets.

And then all at once they all ran away together down the passage behind the wainscot, squeaking and calling to one another, as they ran from house to house; and not one mouse was left in the tailor’s kitchen when Simpkin came back with the pipkin of milk!

Simpkin opened the door and bounced in, with an angry “G‑r‑r‑miaw!” like a cat that is vexed: for he hated the snow, and there was snow in his ears, and snow in his collar at the back of his neck. He put down the loaf and the sausages upon the dresser, and sniffed.

“Simpkin,” said the tailor, “where is my twist?”

But Simpkin set down the pipkin of milk upon the dresser, and looked suspiciously at the teacups. He wanted his supper of little fat mouse!

“Simpkin,” said the tailor, “where is my twist?”

But Simpkin hid a little parcel privately in the teapot, and spit and growled at the tailor; and if Simpkin had been able to talk, he would have asked: “Where is my mouse?”

“Alack, I am undone!” said the Tailor of Gloucester, and went sadly to bed.

All that night long Simpkin hunted and searched through the kitchen, peeping into cupboards and under the wainscot, and into the teapot where he had hidden that twist; but still he found never a mouse!

Whenever the tailor muttered and talked in his sleep, Simpkin said “Miaw‑ger‑r‑w‑s‑s‑ch!” and made strange horrid noises, as cats do at night.

For the poor old tailor was very ill with a fever, tossing and turning in his four-post bed; and still in his dreams he mumbled—“No more twist! no more twist!”

All that day he was ill, and the next day, and the next; and what should become of the cherry-coloured coat? In the tailor’s shop in Westgate Street the embroidered silk and satin lay cut out upon the table—one-and-twenty buttonholes—and who should come to sew them, when the window was barred, and the door was fast locked?

But that does not hinder the little brown mice; they run in and out without any keys through all the old houses in Gloucester!

Out of doors the market folks went trudging through the snow to buy their geese and turkeys, and to bake their Christmas pies; but there would be no Christmas dinner for Simpkin and the poor old Tailor of Gloucester.

The tailor lay ill for three days and nights; and then it was Christmas Eve, and very late at night. The moon climbed up over the roofs and chimneys, and looked down over the gateway into College Court. There were no lights in the windows, nor any sound in the houses; all the city of Gloucester was fast asleep under the snow.

And still Simpkin wanted his mice, and he mewed as he stood beside the four-post bed.

But it is in the old story that all the beasts can talk, in the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the morning (though there are very few folk that can hear them, or know what it is that they say).

When the Cathedral clock struck twelve there was an answer—like an echo of the chimes—and Simpkin heard it, and came out of the tailor’s door, and wandered about in the snow.

From all the roofs and gables and old wooden houses in Gloucester came a thousand merry voices singing the old Christmas rhymes—all the old songs that ever I heard of, and some that I don’t know, like Whittington’s bells.

First and loudest the cocks cried out: “Dame, get up, and bake your pies!”

“Oh, dilly, dilly, dilly!” sighed Simpkin.

And now in a garret there were lights and sounds of dancing, and cats came from over the way.

“Hey, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle! All the cats in Gloucester—except me,” said Simpkin.

Under the wooden eaves the starlings and sparrows sang of Christmas pies; the jackdaws woke up in the Cathedral tower; and although it was the middle of the night the throstles and robins sang; the air was quite full of little twittering tunes.

But it was all rather provoking to poor hungry Simpkin!

Particularly he was vexed with some little shrill voices from behind a wooden lattice. I think that they were bats, because they always have very small voices—especially in a black frost, when they talk in their sleep, like the Tailor of Gloucester.

They said something mysterious that sounded like—

“Buzz, quoth the blue fly; hum, quoth the bee;
Buzz and hum they cry, and so do we!”

and Simpkin went away shaking his ears as if he had a bee in his bonnet.

From the tailor’s shop in Westgate came a glow of light; and when Simpkin crept up to peep in at the window it was full of candles. There was a snippeting of scissors, and snappeting of thread; and little mouse voices sang loudly and gaily—

“Four-and-twenty tailors
Went to catch a snail,
The best man amongst them
Durst not touch her tail,
She put out her horns
Like a little kyloe cow,
Run, tailors, run! or she’ll have you all e’en now!”

Then without a pause the little mouse voices went on again—

“Sieve my lady’s oatmeal,
Grind my lady’s flour,
Put it in a chestnut,
Let it stand an hour—”

“Mew! Mew!” interrupted Simpkin, and he scratched at the door. But the key was under the tailor’s pillow, he could not get in.

The little mice only laughed, and tried another tune—

“Three little mice sat down to spin,
Pussy passed by and she peeped in.
What are you at, my fine little men?
Making coats for gentlemen.
Shall I come in and cut off your threads?
Oh, no, Miss Pussy, you’d bite off our heads!”

“Mew! Mew!” cried Simpkin. “Hey diddle dinketty?” answered the little mice—

“Hey diddle dinketty, poppetty pet!
The merchants of London they wear scarlet;
Silk in the collar, and gold in the hem,
So merrily march the merchantmen!”

They clicked their thimbles to mark the time, but none of the songs pleased Simpkin; he sniffed and mewed at the door of the shop.

“And then I bought
A pipkin and a popkin,
A slipkin and a slopkin,
All for one farthing—

and upon the kitchen dresser!” added the rude little mice.

“Mew! scratch! scratch!” scuffled Simpkin on the windowsill; while the little mice inside sprang to their feet, and all began to shout at once in little twittering voices: “No more twist! No more twist!” And they barred up the window shutters and shut out Simpkin.

But still through the nicks in the shutters he could hear the click of thimbles, and little mouse voices singing—

“No more twist! No more twist!”

Simpkin came away from the shop and went home, considering in his mind. He found the poor old tailor without fever, sleeping peacefully.

Then Simpkin went on tiptoe and took a little parcel of silk out of the teapot, and looked at it in the moonlight; and he felt quite ashamed of his badness compared with those good little mice!

When the tailor awoke in the morning, the first thing which he saw upon the patchwork quilt, was a skein of cherry-coloured twisted silk, and beside his bed stood the repentant Simpkin!

“Alack, I am worn to a ravelling,” said the Tailor of Gloucester, “but I have my twist!”

The sun was shining on the snow when the tailor got up and dressed, and came out into the street with Simpkin running before him.

The starlings whistled on the chimney stacks, and the throstles and robins sang—but they sang their own little noises, not the words they had sung in the night.

“Alack,” said the tailor, “I have my twist; but no more strength—nor time—than will serve to make me one single buttonhole; for this is Christmas Day in the Morning! The Mayor of Gloucester shall be married by noon—and where is his cherry-coloured coat?”

He unlocked the door of the little shop in Westgate Street, and Simpkin ran in, like a cat that expects something.

But there was no one there! Not even one little brown mouse!

The boards were swept clean; the little ends of thread and the little silk snippets were all tidied away, and gone from off the floor.

But upon the table—oh joy! the tailor gave a shout—there, where he had left plain cuttings of silk—there lay the most beautifullest coat and embroidered satin waistcoat that ever were worn by a Mayor of Gloucester.

There were roses and pansies upon the facings of the coat; and the waistcoat was worked with poppies and cornflowers.

Everything was finished except just one single cherry-coloured buttonhole, and where that buttonhole was wanting there was pinned a scrap of paper with these words—in little teeny weeny writing—

No more twist.

And from then began the luck of the Tailor of Gloucester; he grew quite stout, and he grew quite rich.

He made the most wonderful waistcoats for all the rich merchants of Gloucester, and for all the fine gentlemen of the country round.

Never were seen such ruffles, or such embroidered cuffs and lappets! But his buttonholes were the greatest triumph of it all.

The stitches of those buttonholes were so neat—so neat—I wonder how they could be stitched by an old man in spectacles, with crooked old fingers, and a tailor’s thimble.

The stitches of those buttonholes were so small—so small—they looked as if they had been made by little mice!

The Tale of Benjamin Bunny

For the children of Sawrey
from
Old Mr. Bunny

One morning a little rabbit sat on a bank.

He pricked his ears and listened to the trit-trot, trit-trot of a pony.

A gig was coming along the road; it was driven by Mr. McGregor, and beside him sat Mrs. McGregor in her best bonnet.

As soon as they had passed, little Benjamin Bunny slid down into the road, and set off—with a hop, skip, and a jump—to call upon his relations, who lived in the wood at the back of Mr. McGregor’s garden.

That wood was full of rabbit holes; and in the neatest, sandiest hole of all lived Benjamin’s aunt and his cousins—Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.

Old Mrs. Rabbit was a widow; she earned her living by knitting rabbit-wool mittens and muffatees (I once bought a pair at a bazaar). She also sold herbs, and rosemary tea, and rabbit-tobacco (which is what we call lavender).

Little Benjamin did not very much want to see his Aunt.

He came round the back of the fir-tree, and nearly tumbled upon the top of his Cousin Peter.

Peter was sitting by himself. He looked poorly, and was dressed in a red cotton pocket-handkerchief.

“Peter,” said little Benjamin, in a whisper, “who has got your clothes?”

Peter replied, “The scarecrow in Mr. McGregor’s garden,” and described how he had been chased about the garden, and had dropped his shoes and coat.

Little Benjamin sat down beside his cousin and assured him that Mr. McGregor had gone out in a gig, and Mrs. McGregor also; and certainly for the day, because she was wearing her best bonnet.

Peter said he hoped that it would rain.

At this point old Mrs. Rabbit’s voice was heard inside the rabbit hole, calling: “Cottontail! Cottontail! fetch some more camomile!”

Peter said he thought he might feel better if he went for a walk.

They went away hand in hand, and got upon the flat top of the wall at the bottom of the wood. From here they looked down into Mr. McGregor’s garden. Peter’s coat and shoes were plainly to be seen upon the scarecrow, topped with an old tam-o’-shanter of Mr. McGregor’s.

Little Benjamin said: “It spoils people’s clothes to squeeze under a gate; the proper way to get in is to climb down a pear-tree.”

Peter fell down head first; but it was of no consequence, as the bed below was newly raked and quite soft.

It had been sown with lettuces.

They left a great many odd little footmarks all over the bed, especially little Benjamin, who was wearing clogs.

Little Benjamin said that the first thing to be done was to get back Peter’s clothes, in order that they might be able to use the pocket-handkerchief.

They took them off the scarecrow. There had been rain during the night; there was water in the shoes, and the coat was somewhat shrunk.

Benjamin tried on the tam-o’-shanter, but it was too big for him.

Then he suggested that they should fill the pocket-handkerchief with onions, as a little present for his Aunt.

Peter did not seem to be enjoying himself; he kept hearing noises.

Benjamin, on the contrary, was perfectly at home, and ate a lettuce leaf. He said that he was in the habit of coming to the garden with his father to get lettuces for their Sunday dinner.

(The name of little Benjamin’s papa was old Mr. Benjamin Bunny.)

The lettuces certainly were very fine.

Peter did not eat anything; he said he should like to go home. Presently he dropped half the onions.

Little Benjamin said that it was not possible to get back up the pear-tree with a load of vegetables. He led the way boldly towards the other end of the garden. They went along a little walk on planks, under a sunny, red brick wall.

The mice sat on their doorsteps cracking cherrystones; they winked at Peter Rabbit and little Benjamin Bunny.

Presently Peter let the pocket-handkerchief go again.

They got amongst flowerpots, and frames, and tubs. Peter heard noises worse than ever; his eyes were as big as lolly-pops!

He was a step or two in front of his cousin when he suddenly stopped.

This is what those little rabbits saw round that corner!

Little Benjamin took one look, and then, in half a minute less than no time, he hid himself and Peter and the onions underneath a large basket. …

The cat got up and stretched herself, and came and sniffed at the basket.

Perhaps she liked the smell of onions!

Anyway, she sat down upon the top of the basket.

She sat there for five hours.

I cannot draw you a picture of Peter and Benjamin underneath the basket, because it was quite dark, and because the smell of onions was fearful; it made Peter Rabbit and little Benjamin cry.

The sun got round behind the wood, and it was quite late in the afternoon; but still the cat sat upon the basket.

At length there was a pitter-patter, pitter-patter, and some bits of mortar fell from the wall above.

The cat looked up and saw old Mr. Benjamin Bunny prancing along the top of the wall of the upper terrace.

He was smoking a pipe of rabbit-tobacco, and had a little switch in his hand.

He was looking for his son.

Old Mr. Bunny had no opinion whatever of cats.

He took a tremendous jump off the top of the wall on to the top of the cat, and cuffed it off the basket, and kicked it into the greenhouse, scratching off a handful of fur.

The cat was too much surprised to scratch back.

When old Mr. Bunny had driven the cat into the greenhouse, he locked the door.

Then he came back to the basket and took out his son Benjamin by the ears, and whipped him with the little switch.

Then he took out his nephew Peter.

Then he took out the handkerchief of onions, and marched out of the garden.

When Mr. McGregor returned about half an hour later he observed several things which perplexed him.

It looked as though some person had been walking all over the garden in a pair of clogs—only the footmarks were too ridiculously little!

Also he could not understand how the cat could have managed to shut herself up inside the greenhouse, locking the door upon the outside.

When Peter got home his mother forgave him, because she was so glad to see that he had found his shoes and coat. Cottontail and Peter folded up the pocket-handkerchief, and old Mrs. Rabbit strung up the onions and hung them from the kitchen ceiling, with the bunches of herbs and the rabbit-tobacco.

The Tale of Two Bad Mice

For
W. M. L. W.
The little girl
who had the doll’s house

Once upon a time there was a very beautiful doll’s-house; it was red brick with white windows, and it had real muslin curtains and a front door and a chimney.

It belonged to two Dolls called Lucinda and Jane; at least it belonged to Lucinda, but she never ordered meals.

Jane was the Cook; but she never did any cooking, because the dinner had been bought ready-made, in a box full of shavings.

There were two red lobsters and a ham, a fish, a pudding, and some pears and oranges.

They would not come off the plates, but they were extremely beautiful.

One morning Lucinda and Jane had gone out for a drive in the doll’s perambulator. There was no one in the nursery, and it was very quiet. Presently there was a little scuffling, scratching noise in a corner near the fireplace, where there was a hole under the skirting-board.

Tom Thumb put out his head for a moment, and then popped it in again.

Tom Thumb was a mouse.

A minute afterwards, Hunca Munca, his wife, put her head out, too; and when she saw that there was no one in the nursery, she ventured out on the oilcloth under the coal-box.

The doll’s-house stood at the other side of the fireplace. Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca went cautiously across the hearthrug. They pushed the front door—it was not fast.

Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca went upstairs and peeped into the dining-room. Then they squeaked with joy!

Such a lovely dinner was laid out upon the table! There were tin spoons, and lead knives and forks, and two dolly-chairs—all so convenient!

Tom Thumb set to work at once to carve the ham. It was a beautiful shiny yellow, streaked with red.

The knife crumpled up and hurt him; he put his finger in his mouth.

“It is not boiled enough; it is hard. You have a try, Hunca Munca.”

Hunca Munca stood up in her chair, and chopped at the ham with another lead knife.

“It’s as hard as the hams at the cheesemonger’s,” said Hunca Munca.

The ham broke off the plate with a jerk, and rolled under the table.

“Let it alone,” said Tom Thumb; “give me some fish, Hunca Munca!”

Hunca Munca tried every tin spoon in turn; the fish was glued to the dish.

Then Tom Thumb lost his temper. He put the ham in the middle of the floor, and hit it with the tongs and with the shovel—bang, bang, smash, smash!

The ham flew all into pieces, for underneath the shiny paint it was made of nothing but plaster!

Then there was no end to the rage and disappointment of Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca. They broke up the pudding, the lobsters, the pears and the oranges.

As the fish would not come off the plate, they put it into the red-hot crinkly paper fire in the kitchen; but it would not burn either.

Tom Thumb went up the kitchen chimney and looked out at the top—there was no soot.

While Tom Thumb was up the chimney, Hunca Munca had another disappointment. She found some tiny canisters upon the dresser, labelled—Rice—Coffee—Sago—but when she turned them upside down, there was nothing inside except red and blue beads.

Then those mice set to work to do all the mischief they could—especially Tom Thumb! He took Jane’s clothes out of the chest of drawers in her bedroom, and he threw them out of the top floor window.

But Hunca Munca had a frugal mind. After pulling half the feathers out of Lucinda’s bolster, she remembered that she herself was in want of a feather bed.

With Tom Thumb’s assistance she carried the bolster downstairs, and across the hearthrug. It was difficult to squeeze the bolster into the mouse-hole; but they managed it somehow.

Then Hunca Munca went back and fetched a chair, a bookcase, a birdcage, and several small odds and ends. The bookcase and the birdcage refused to go into the mouse-hole.

Hunca Munca left them behind the coal-box, and went to fetch a cradle.

Hunca Munca was just returning with another chair, when suddenly there was a noise of talking outside upon the landing. The mice rushed back to their hole, and the dolls came into the nursery.

What a sight met the eyes of Jane and Lucinda!

Lucinda sat upon the upset kitchen stove and stared; and Jane leant against the kitchen dresser and smiled—but neither of them made any remark.

The bookcase and the birdcage were rescued from under the coal-box—but Hunca Munca has got the cradle, and some of Lucinda’s clothes.

She also has some useful pots and pans, and several other things.

The little girl that the doll’s-house belonged to, said—“I will get a doll dressed like a policeman!”

But the nurse said—“I will set a mousetrap!”

So that is the story of the two Bad Mice—but they were not so very very naughty after all, because Tom Thumb paid for everything he broke.

He found a crooked sixpence under the hearthrug; and upon Christmas Eve, he and Hunca Munca stuffed it into one of the stockings of Lucinda and Jane.

And very early every morning—before anybody is awake—Hunca Munca comes with her dustpan and her broom to sweep the Dollies’ house!

The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle

For
the real little Lucie
of Newlands

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Lucie, who lived at a farm called Little-town. She was a good little girl—only she was always losing her pocket-handkerchiefs!

One day little Lucie came into the farmyard crying—oh, she did cry so! “I’ve lost my pocket-handkin! Three handkins and a pinny! Have you seen them, Tabby Kitten?”

The Kitten went on washing her white paws; so Lucie asked a speckled hen—

“Sally Henny-penny, have you found three pocket-handkins?”

But the speckled hen ran into a barn, clucking—

“I go barefoot, barefoot, barefoot!”

And then Lucie asked Cock Robin sitting on a twig.

Cock Robin looked sideways at Lucie with his bright black eye, and he flew over a stile and away.

Lucie climbed upon the stile and looked up at the hill behind Little-town—a hill that goes up—up—into the clouds as though it had no top!

And a great way up the hillside she thought she saw some white things spread upon the grass.

Lucie scrambled up the hill as fast as her stout legs would carry her; she ran along a steep pathway—up and up—until Little-town was right away down below—she could have dropped a pebble down the chimney!

Presently she came to a spring, bubbling out from the hillside.

Someone had stood a tin can upon a stone to catch the water—but the water was already running over, for the can was no bigger than an eggcup! And where the sand upon the path was wet—there were footmarks of a very small person.

Lucie ran on, and on.

The path ended under a big rock. The grass was short and green, and there were clothes—props cut from bracken stems, with lines of plaited rushes, and a heap of tiny clothes pins—but no pocket-handkerchiefs!

But there was something else—a door! straight into the hill; and inside it someone was singing—

“Lily-white and clean, oh!
With little frills between, oh!
Smooth and hot—red rusty spot
Never here be seen, oh!”

Lucie, knocked—once—twice, and interrupted the song. A little frightened voice called out “Who’s that?”

Lucie opened the door: and what do you think there was inside the hill?—a nice clean kitchen with a flagged floor and wooden beams—just like any other farm kitchen. Only the ceiling was so low that Lucie’s head nearly touched it; and the pots and pans were small, and so was everything there.

There was a nice hot singey smell; and at the table, with an iron in her hand stood a very stout short person staring anxiously at Lucie.

Her print gown was tucked up, and she was wearing a large apron over her striped petticoat. Her little black nose went sniffle, sniffle, snuffle, and her eyes went twinkle, twinkle; and underneath her cap—where Lucie had yellow curls—that little person had prickles!

“Who are you?” said Lucie. “Have you seen my pocket-handkins?”

The little person made a bob-curtsey—“Oh, yes, if you please’m; my name is Mrs. Tiggy-winkle; oh, yes if you please’m, I’m an excellent clear-starcher!” And she took something out of a clothes-basket, and spread it on the ironing-blanket.

“What’s that thing?” said Lucie—“that’s not my pocket-handkin?”

“Oh no, if you please’m; that’s a little scarlet waistcoat belonging to Cock Robin!”

And she ironed it and folded it, and put it on one side.

Then she took something else off a clotheshorse—

“That isn’t my pinny?” said Lucie.

“Oh no, if you please’m; that’s a damask tablecloth belonging to Jenny Wren; look how it’s stained with currant wine! It’s very bad to wash!” said Mrs. Tiggy-winkle.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle’s nose went sniffle, sniffle, snuffle, and her eyes went twinkle, twinkle; and she fetched another hot iron from the fire.

“There’s one of my pocket-handkins!” cried Lucie—“and there’s my pinny!”

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle ironed it, and goffered it, and shook out the frills.

“Oh that is lovely!” said Lucie.

“And what are those long yellow things with fingers like gloves?”

“Oh, that’s a pair of stockings belonging to Sally Henny-penny—look how she’s worn the heels out with scratching in the yard! She’ll very soon go barefoot!” said Mrs. Tiggy-winkle.

“Why, there’s another handkersniff—but it isn’t mine; it’s red?”

“Oh no, if you please’m; that one belongs to old Mrs. Rabbit; and it did so smell of onions! I’ve had to wash it separately, I can’t get out the smell.”

“There’s another one of mine,” said Lucie.

“What are those funny little white things?”

“That’s a pair of mittens belonging to Tabby Kitten; I only have to iron them; she washes them herself.”

“There’s my last pocket-handkin!” said Lucie.

“And what are you dipping into the basin of starch?”

“They’re little dicky shirtfronts belonging to Tom Titmouse—most terrible particular!” said Mrs. Tiggy-winkle. “Now I’ve finished my ironing; I’m going to air some clothes.”

“What are these dear soft fluffy things?” said Lucie.

“Oh those are woolly coats belonging to the little lambs at Skelghyl.”

“Will their jackets take off?” asked Lucie.

“Oh yes, if you please’m; look at the sheep-mark on the shoulder. And here’s one marked for Gatesgarth, and three that come from Little-town. They’re always marked at washing!” said Mrs. Tiggy-winkle.

And she hung up all sorts and sizes of clothes—small brown coats of mice; and one velvety black moleskin waistcoat; and a red tailcoat with no tail belonging to Squirrel Nutkin; and a very much shrunk blue jacket belonging to Peter Rabbit; and a petticoat, not marked, that had gone lost in the washing—and at last the basket was empty!

Then Mrs. Tiggy-winkle made tea—a cup for herself and a cup for Lucie. They sat before the fire on a bench and looked sideways at one another. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle’s hand, holding the teacup, was very very brown, and very very wrinkly with the soapsuds; and all through her gown and her cap, there were hairpins sticking wrong end out; so that Lucie didn’t like to sit too near her.

When they had finished tea, they tied up the clothes in bundles; and Lucie’s pocket-handkerchiefs were folded up inside her clean pinny, and fastened with a silver safety-pin.

And then they made up the fire with turf, and came out and locked the door, and hid the key under the doorsill.

Then away down the hill trotted Lucie and Mrs. Tiggy-winkle with the bundles of clothes!

All the way down the path little animals came out of the fern to meet them; the very first that they met were Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny!

And she gave them their nice clean clothes; and all the little animals and birds were so very much obliged to dear Mrs. Tiggy-winkle.

So that at the bottom of the hill when they came to the stile, there was nothing left to carry except Lucie’s one little bundle.

Lucie scrambled up the stile with the bundle in her hand; and then she turned to say “Good night,” and to thank the washerwoman—But what a very odd thing! Mrs. Tiggy-winkle had not waited either for thanks or for the washing bill!

She was running running running up the hill—and where was her white frilled cap? and her shawl? and her gown—and her petticoat?

And how small she had grown—and how brown—and covered with prickles!

Why! Mrs. Tiggy-winkle was nothing but a Hedgehog.

(Now some people say that little Lucie had been asleep upon the stile—but then how could she have found three clean pocket-handkins and a pinny, pinned with a silver safety-pin?

And besides—I have seen that door into the back of the hill called Cat Bells—and besides I am very well acquainted with dear Mrs. Tiggy-winkle!)

The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan

Pussycat sits by the fire—how should she be fair?
In walks the little dog—says “Pussy are you there?
How do you do Mistress Pussy? Mistress Pussy, how do you do?”
“I thank you kindly, little dog. I fare as well as you!”

Old Rhyme

For Joan, to read to baby.

Butter and milk from the farm.

Once upon a time there was a Pussycat called Ribby, who invited a little dog called Duchess, to tea.

“Come in good time, my dear Duchess” (said Ribby’s letter), “and we will have something so very very nice. I am baking it in a pie-dish—a pie-dish with a pink rim. You never tasted anything so good! And you shall eat it all! I will eat muffins, my dear Duchess!” wrote Ribby.

Duchess read the letter and wrote an answer:—“I will come with much pleasure at a quarter past four. But it is very strange. I was just going to invite you to come here, to supper, my dear Ribby, to eat something most delicious.

“I will come very punctually, my dear Ribby,” wrote Duchess; and then at the end she added—“I hope it isn’t mouse?”

And then she thought that did not look quite polite; so she scratched out “isn’t mouse” and changed it to “I hope it will be fine,” and she gave her letter to the postman.

But she thought a great deal about Ribby’s pie, and she read Ribby’s letter over and over again.

“I am dreadfully afraid it will be mouse!” said Duchess to herself—“I really couldn’t, couldn’t eat mouse pie. And I shall have to eat it, because it is a party. And my pie was going to be veal and ham. A pink and white pie-dish! and so is mine; just like Ribby’s dishes; they were both bought at Tabitha Twitchit’s.”

The invitation.

Duchess went into her larder and took the pie off a shelf and looked at it.

“It is all ready to put into the oven. Such lovely pie-crust; and I put in a little tin patty-pan to hold up the crust; and I made a hole in the middle with a fork to let out the steam—Oh I do wish I could eat my own pie, instead of a pie made of mouse!”

Duchess considered and considered and read Ribby’s letter again—

“A pink and white pie-dish—and you shall eat it all. ‘You’ means me—then Ribby is not going to even taste the pie herself? A pink and white pie-dish! Ribby is sure to go out to buy the muffins. … Oh what a good idea! Why shouldn’t I rush along and put my pie into Ribby’s oven when Ribby isn’t there?”

Duchess was quite delighted with her own cleverness!

Ribby in the meantime had received Duchess’s answer, and as soon as she was sure that the little dog could come—she popped her pie into the oven. There were two ovens, one above the other; some other knobs and handles were only ornamental and not intended to open. Ribby put the pie into the lower oven; the door was very stiff.

“The top oven bakes too quickly,” said Ribby to herself. “It is a pie of the most delicate and tender mouse minced up with bacon. And I have taken out all the bones; because Duchess did nearly choke herself with a fish-bone last time I gave a party. She eats a little fast—rather big mouthfuls. But a most genteel and elegant little dog; infinitely superior company to Cousin Tabitha Twitchit.”

Ribby put on some coal and swept up the hearth. Then she went out with a can to the well, for water to fill up the kettle.

Then she began to set the room in order, for it was the sitting-room as well as the kitchen. She shook the mats out at the front-door and put them straight; the hearthrug was a rabbit-skin. She dusted the clock and the ornaments on the mantelpiece, and she polished and rubbed the tables and chairs.

The veal and ham pie.

Then she spread a very clean white tablecloth, and set out her best china tea-set, which she took out of a wall-cupboard near the fireplace. The teacups were white with a pattern of pink roses; and the dinner-plates were white and blue.

When Ribby had laid the table she took a jug and a blue and white dish, and went out down the field to the farm, to fetch milk and butter.

When she came back, she peeped into the bottom oven; the pie looked very comfortable.

Ribby put on her shawl and bonnet and went out again with a basket, to the village shop to buy a packet of tea, a pound of lump sugar, and a pot of marmalade.

And just at the same time, Duchess came out of her house, at the other end of the village.

Ribby met Duchess halfway down the street, also carrying a basket, covered with a cloth. They only bowed to one another; they did not speak, because they were going to have a party.

As soon as Duchess had got round the corner out of sight—she simply ran! Straight away to Ribby’s house!

Ribby went into the shop and bought what she required, and came out, after a pleasant gossip with Cousin Tabitha Twitchit.

Cousin Tabitha was disdainful afterwards in conversation—

“A little dog indeed! Just as if there were no cats in Sawrey! And a pie for afternoon tea! The very idea!” said Cousin Tabitha Twitchit.

Ribby went on to Timothy Baker’s and bought the muffins. Then she went home.

There seemed to be a sort of scuffling noise in the back passage, as she was coming in at the front door.

“I trust that is not that Pie: the spoons are locked up, however,” said Ribby.

But there was nobody there. Ribby opened the bottom oven door with some difficulty, and turned the pie. There began to be a pleasing smell of baked mouse!

Duchess in the meantime, had slipped out at the back door.

“It is a very odd thing that Ribby’s pie was not in the oven when I put mine in! And I can’t find it anywhere; I have looked all over the house. I put my pie into a nice hot oven at the top. I could not turn any of the other handles; I think that they are all shams,” said Duchess, “but I wish I could have removed the pie made of mouse! I cannot think what she has done with it? I heard Ribby coming and I had to run out by the back door!”

Where is the pie made of mouse?

Duchess went home and brushed her beautiful black coat; and then she picked a bunch of flowers in her garden as a present for Ribby; and passed the time until the clock struck four.

Ribby—having assured herself by careful search that there was really no one hiding in the cupboard or in the larder—went upstairs to change her dress.

She put on a lilac silk gown, for the party, and an embroidered muslin apron and tippet.

“It is very strange,” said Ribby, “I did not think I left that drawer pulled out; has somebody been trying on my mittens?”

She came downstairs again, and made the tea, and put the teapot on the hob. She peeped again into the bottom oven, the pie had become a lovely brown, and it was steaming hot.

She sat down before the fire to wait for the little dog. “I am glad I used the bottom oven,” said Ribby, “the top one would certainly have been very much too hot. I wonder why that cupboard door was open? Can there really have been someone in the house?”

Ready for the party.

Very punctually at four o’clock, Duchess started to go to the party. She ran so fast through the village that she was too early, and she had to wait a little while in the lane that leads down to Ribby’s house.

“I wonder if Ribby has taken my pie out of the oven yet?” said Duchess, “and whatever can have become of the other pie made of mouse?”

At a quarter past four to the minute, there came a most genteel little tap-tappity. “Is Mrs. Ribston at home?” inquired Duchess in the porch.

“Come in! and how do you do, my dear Duchess?” cried Ribby. “I hope I see you well?”

“Quite well, I thank you, and how do you do, my dear Ribby?” said Duchess. “I’ve brought you some flowers; what a delicious smell of pie!”

“Oh, what lovely flowers! Yes, it is mouse and bacon!”

“Do not talk about food, my dear Ribby,” said Duchess; “what a lovely white tea-cloth! … Is it done to a turn? Is it still in the oven?”

“I think it wants another five minutes,” said Ribby. “Just a shade longer; I will pour out the tea, while we wait. Do you take sugar, my dear Duchess?”

Duchess in the porch.

“Oh yes, please! my dear Ribby; and may I have a lump upon my nose?”

“With pleasure, my dear Duchess; how beautifully you beg! Oh, how sweetly pretty!”

Duchess sat up with the sugar on her nose and sniffed—

“How good that pie smells! I do love veal and ham—I mean to say mouse and bacon—”

She dropped the sugar in confusion, and had to go hunting under the tea-table, so did not see which oven Ribby opened in order to get out the pie.

Ribby set the pie upon the table; there was a very savoury smell.

Duchess came out from under the tablecloth munching sugar, and sat up on a chair.

“I will first cut the pie for you; I am going to have muffin and marmalade,” said Ribby.

“Do you really prefer muffin? Mind the patty-pan!”

“I beg your pardon?” said Ribby.

“May I pass you the marmalade?” said Duchess hurriedly.

The pie proved extremely toothsome, and the muffins light and hot. They disappeared rapidly, especially the pie!

“I think”—(thought the Duchess to herself)—“I think it would be wiser if I helped myself to pie; though Ribby did not seem to notice anything when she was cutting it. What very small fine pieces it has cooked into! I did not remember that I had minced it up so fine; I suppose this is a quicker oven than my own.”

“How fast Duchess is eating!” thought Ribby to herself, as she buttered her fifth muffin.

The pie-dish was emptying rapidly! Duchess had had four servings already, and was fumbling with the spoon.

Where is the patty-pan?

“A little more bacon, my dear Duchess?” said Ribby.

“Thank you, my dear Ribby; I was only feeling for the patty-pan.”

“The patty-pan? my dear Duchess?”

“The patty-pan that held up the pie-crust,” said Duchess, blushing under her black coat.

“Oh, I didn’t put one in, my dear Duchess,” said Ribby; “I don’t think that it is necessary in pies made of mouse.”

Duchess fumbled with the spoon—“I can’t find it!” she said anxiously.

“There isn’t a patty-pan,” said Ribby, looking perplexed.

“Yes, indeed, my dear Ribby; where can it have gone to?” said Duchess.

“There most certainly is not one, my dear Duchess. I disapprove of tin articles in puddings and pies. It is most undesirable—(especially when people swallow in lumps!)” she added in a lower voice.

Duchess looked very much alarmed, and continued to scoop the inside of the pie-dish.

“My Great-aunt Squintina (grandmother of Cousin Tabitha Twitchit)—died of a thimble in a Christmas plum-pudding. I never put any article of metal in my puddings or pies.”

Duchess looked aghast, and tilted up the pie-dish.

“I have only four patty-pans, and they are all in the cupboard.”

Duchess set up a howl.

“I shall die! I shall die! I have swallowed a patty-pan! Oh, my dear Ribby, I do feel so ill!”

“It is impossible, my dear Duchess; there was not a patty-pan.”

Duchess moaned and whined and rocked herself about.

“Oh I feel so dreadful, I have swallowed a patty-pan!”

“There was nothing in the pie,” said Ribby severely.

“Yes there was, my dear Ribby, I am sure I have swallowed it!”

“Let me prop you up with a pillow, my dear Duchess; where do you think you feel it?”

“Oh I do feel so ill all over me, my dear Ribby; I have swallowed a large tin patty-pan with a sharp scalloped edge!”

“Shall I run for the doctor? I will just lock up the spoons!”

“Oh yes, yes! fetch Dr. Maggotty, my dear Ribby: he is a Pie himself, he will certainly understand.”

Ribby settled Duchess in an armchair before the fire, and went out and hurried to the village to look for the doctor.

She found him at the smithy.

He was occupied in putting rusty nails into a bottle of ink, which he had obtained at the post office.

“Gammon? ha! ha!” said he, with his head on one side.

Ribby explained that her guest had swallowed a patty-pan.

“Spinach? ha! ha!” said he, and accompanied her with alacrity.

He hopped so fast that Ribby had to run. It was most conspicuous. All the village could see that Ribby was fetching the doctor.

“I knew they would overeat themselves!” said Cousin Tabitha Twitchit.

Dr. Maggoty’s mixture.

But while Ribby had been hunting for the doctor—a curious thing had happened to Duchess, who had been left by herself, sitting before the fire, sighing and groaning and feeling very unhappy.

“How could I have swallowed it! such a large thing as a patty-pan!”

She got up and went to the table, and felt inside the pie-dish again with a spoon.

“No; there is no patty-pan, and I put one in; and nobody has eaten pie except me, so I must have swallowed it!”

She sat down again, and stared mournfully at the grate. The fire crackled and danced, and something sizz‑z‑zled!

Duchess started! She opened the door of the top oven; out came a rich steamy flavour of veal and ham, and there stood a fine brown pie—and through a hole in the top of the pie-crust there was a glimpse of a little tin patty-pan!

Duchess drew a long breath—

“Then I must have been eating mouse! … No wonder I feel ill. … But perhaps I should feel worse if I had really swallowed a patty-pan!” Duchess reflected—“What a very awkward thing to have to explain to Ribby! I think I will put my pie in the backyard and say nothing about it. When I go home, I will run round and take it away.” She put it outside the backdoor, and sat down again by the fire, and shut her eyes; when Ribby arrived with the doctor, she seemed fast asleep.

“Gammon, ha, ha?” said the doctor.

“I am feeling very much better,” said Duchess, waking up with a jump.

“I am truly glad to hear it! He has brought you a pill, my dear Duchess!”

“I think I should feel quite well if he only felt my pulse,” said Duchess, backing away from the magpie, who sidled up with something in his beak.

“It is only a bread pill, you had much better take it; drink a little milk, my dear Duchess!”

“Gammon? Gammon?” said the doctor, while Duchess coughed and choked.

“Don’t say that again!” said Ribby, losing her temper—“Here, take this bread and jam, and get out into the yard!”

“Gammon and Spinach! ha ha ha!” shouted Dr. Maggotty triumphantly outside the back door.

“I am feeling very much better my dear Ribby,” said Duchess. “Do you not think that I had better go home before it gets dark?”

“Perhaps it might be wise, my dear Duchess. I will lend you a nice warm shawl, and you shall take my arm.”

So there really was a patty-pan.

“I would not trouble you for worlds; I feel wonderfully better. One pill of Dr. Maggotty—”

“Indeed it is most admirable, if it has cured you of a patty-pan! I will call directly after breakfast to ask how you have slept.”

Ribby and Duchess said goodbye affectionately, and Duchess started home. Halfway up the lane she stopped and looked back; Ribby had gone in and shut her door. Duchess slipped through the fence, and ran round to the back of Ribby’s house, and peeped into the yard.

Upon the roof of the pig-stye sat Dr. Maggotty and three jackdaws. The jackdaws were eating pie-crust, and the magpie was drinking gravy out of a patty-pan.

“Gammon, ha, ha!” he shouted when he saw Duchess’s little black nose peeping round the corner.

Duchess ran home feeling uncommonly silly!

When Ribby came out for a pailful of water to wash up the tea-things, she found a pink and white pie-dish lying smashed in the middle of the yard. The patty-pan was under the pump, where Dr. Maggotty had considerately left it.

Ribby stared with amazement—“Did you ever see the like! so there really was a patty-pan? … But my patty-pans are all in the kitchen cupboard. Well I never did! … Next time I want to give a party—I will invite Cousin Tabitha Twitchit!”

The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher

For
Stephanie
from
Cousin B.

Once upon a time there was a frog called Mr. Jeremy Fisher; he lived in a little damp house amongst the buttercups at the edge of a pond.

The water was all slippy-sloppy in the larder and in the back passage.

But Mr. Jeremy liked getting his feet wet; nobody ever scolded him, and he never caught a cold!

He was quite pleased when he looked out and saw large drops of rain, splashing in the pond—

“I will get some worms and go fishing and catch a dish of minnows for my dinner,” said Mr. Jeremy Fisher. “If I catch more than five fish, I will invite my friends Mr. Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise and Sir Isaac Newton. The Alderman, however, eats salad.”

Mr. Jeremy put on a macintosh, and a pair of shiny goloshes; he took his rod and basket, and set off with enormous hops to the place where he kept his boat.

The boat was round and green, and very like the other lily-leaves. It was tied to a water-plant in the middle of the pond.

Mr. Jeremy took a reed pole, and pushed the boat out into open water. “I know a good place for minnows,” said Mr. Jeremy Fisher.

Mr. Jeremy stuck his pole into the mud and fastened the boat to it.

Then he settled himself cross-legged and arranged his fishing tackle. He had the dearest little red float. His rod was a tough stalk of grass, his line was a fine long white horsehair, and he tied a little wriggling worm at the end.

The rain trickled down his back, and for nearly an hour he stared at the float.

“This is getting tiresome, I think I should like some lunch,” said Mr. Jeremy Fisher.

He punted back again amongst the water-plants, and took some lunch out of his basket.

“I will eat a butterfly sandwich, and wait till the shower is over,” said Mr. Jeremy Fisher.

A great big water-beetle came up underneath the lily leaf and tweaked the toe of one of his goloshes.

Mr. Jeremy crossed his legs up shorter, out of reach, and went on eating his sandwich.

Once or twice something moved about with a rustle and a splash amongst the rushes at the side of the pond.

“I trust that is not a rat,” said Mr. Jeremy Fisher; “I think I had better get away from here.”

Mr. Jeremy shoved the boat out again a little way, and dropped in the bait. There was a bite almost directly; the float gave a tremendous bobbit!

“A minnow! a minnow! I have him by the nose!” cried Mr. Jeremy Fisher, jerking up his rod.

But what a horrible surprise! Instead of a smooth fat minnow, Mr. Jeremy landed little Jack Sharp the stickleback, covered with spines!

The stickleback floundered about the boat, pricking and snapping until he was quite out of breath. Then he jumped back into the water.

And a shoal of other little fishes put their heads out, and laughed at Mr. Jeremy Fisher.

And while Mr. Jeremy sat disconsolately on the edge of his boat—sucking his sore fingers and peering down into the water—a much worse thing happened; a really frightful thing it would have been, if Mr. Jeremy had not been wearing a macintosh!

A great big enormous trout came up—ker‑pflop‑p‑p‑p! with a splash—and it seized Mr. Jeremy with a snap, “Ow! Ow! Ow!”—and then it turned and dived down to the bottom of the pond!

But the trout was so displeased with the taste of the macintosh, that in less than half a minute it spat him out again; and the only thing it swallowed was Mr. Jeremy’s goloshes.

Mr. Jeremy bounced up to the surface of the water, like a cork and the bubbles out of a soda water bottle; and he swam with all his might to the edge of the pond.

He scrambled out on the first bank he came to, and he hopped home across the meadow with his macintosh all in tatters.

“What a mercy that was not a pike!” said Mr. Jeremy Fisher. “I have lost my rod and basket; but it does not much matter, for I am sure I should never have dared to go fishing again!”

He put some sticking plaster on his fingers, and his friends both came to dinner. He could not offer them fish, but he had something else in his larder.

Sir Isaac Newton wore his black and gold waistcoat,

And Mr. Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise brought a salad with him in a string bag.

And instead of a nice dish of minnows—they had a roasted grasshopper with ladybird sauce; which frogs consider a beautiful treat; but I think it must have been nasty!

The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit

This is a fierce bad Rabbit; look at his savage whiskers, and his claws and his turned-up tail.

This is a nice gentle Rabbit. His mother has given him a carrot.

The bad Rabbit would like some carrot.

He doesn’t say “Please.” He takes it!

And he scratches the good Rabbit very badly.

The good Rabbit creeps away, and hides in a hole. It feels sad.

This is a man with a gun.

He sees something sitting on a bench. He thinks it is a very funny bird!

He comes creeping up behind the trees.

And then he shoots—Bang!

This is what happens—

But this is all he finds on the bench, when he rushes up with his gun.

The good Rabbit peeps out of its hole,

And it sees the bad Rabbit tearing past—without any tail or whiskers!

The Story of Miss Moppet

This is a Pussy called Miss Moppet, she thinks she has heard a mouse!

This is the Mouse peeping out behind the cupboard, and making fun of Miss Moppet. He is not afraid of a kitten.

This is Miss Moppet jumping just too late; she misses the Mouse and hits her own head.

She thinks it is a very hard cupboard!

The Mouse watches Miss Moppet from the top of the cupboard.

Miss Moppet ties up her head in a duster, and sits before the fire.

The Mouse thinks she is looking very ill. He comes sliding down the bellpull.

Miss Moppet looks worse and worse. The Mouse comes a little nearer.

Miss Moppet holds her poor head in her paws, and looks at him through a hole in the duster. The Mouse comes very close.

And then all of a sudden—Miss Moppet jumps upon the Mouse!

And because the Mouse has teased Miss Moppet—Miss Moppet thinks she will tease the Mouse; which is not at all nice of Miss Moppet.

She ties him up in the duster, and tosses it about like a ball.

But she forgot about that hole in the duster; and when she untied it—there was no Mouse!

He has wriggled out and run away; and he is dancing a jig on the top of the cupboard!

The Tale of Tom Kitten

Dedicated
to all Pickles,
—especially to those that
get upon my garden wall.

Once upon a time there were three little kittens, and their names were Mittens, Tom Kitten, and Moppet.

They had dear little fur coats of their own; and they tumbled about the doorstep and played in the dust.

But one day their mother—Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit—expected friends to tea; so she fetched the kittens indoors, to wash and dress them, before the fine company arrived.

First she scrubbed their faces (this one is Moppet).

Then she brushed their fur, (this one is Mittens).

Then she combed their tails and whiskers (this is Tom Kitten).

Tom was very naughty, and he scratched.

Mrs. Tabitha dressed Moppet and Mittens in clean pinafores and tuckers; and then she took all sorts of elegant uncomfortable clothes out of a chest of drawers, in order to dress up her son Thomas.

Tom Kitten was very fat, and he had grown; several buttons burst off. His mother sewed them on again.

When the three kittens were ready, Mrs. Tabitha unwisely turned them out into the garden, to be out of the way while she made hot buttered toast.

“Now keep your frocks clean, children! You must walk on your hind legs. Keep away from the dirty ash-pit, and from Sally Henny Penny, and from the pig-stye and the Puddle-ducks.”

Moppet and Mittens walked down the garden path unsteadily. Presently they trod upon their pinafores and fell on their noses.

When they stood up there were several green smears!

“Let us climb up the rockery, and sit on the garden wall,” said Moppet.

They turned their pinafores back to front, and went up with a skip and a jump; Moppet’s white tucker fell down into the road.

Tom Kitten was quite unable to jump when walking upon his hind legs in trousers. He came up the rockery by degrees, breaking the ferns, and shedding buttons right and left.

He was all in pieces when he reached the top of the wall.

Moppet and Mittens tried to pull him together; his hat fell off, and the rest of his buttons burst.

While they were in difficulties, there was a pit pat paddle pat! and the three Puddle-ducks came along the hard high road, marching one behind the other and doing the goose step—pit pat paddle pat! pit pat waddle pat!

They stopped and stood in a row, and stared up at the kittens. They had very small eyes and looked surprised.

Then the two duck-birds, Rebeccah and Jemima Puddle-duck, picked up the hat and tucker and put them on.

Mittens laughed so that she fell off the wall. Moppet and Tom descended after her; the pinafores and all the rest of Tom’s clothes came off on the way down.

“Come! Mr. Drake Puddle-duck,” said Moppet—“Come and help us to dress him! Come and button up Tom!”

Mr. Drake Puddle-duck advanced in a slow sideways manner, and picked up the various articles.

But he put them on himself! They fitted him even worse than Tom Kitten.

“It’s a very fine morning!” said Mr. Drake Puddle-duck.

And he and Jemima and Rebeccah Puddle-duck set off up the road, keeping step—pit pat, paddle pat! pit pat, waddle pat!

Then Tabitha Twitchit came down the garden and found her kittens on the wall with no clothes on.

She pulled them off the wall, smacked them, and took them back to the house.

“My friends will arrive in a minute, and you are not fit to be seen; I am affronted,” said Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit.

She sent them upstairs; and I am sorry to say she told her friends that they were in bed with the measles; which was not true.

Quite the contrary; they were not in bed: not in the least.

Somehow there were very extraordinary noises overhead, which disturbed the dignity and repose of the tea party.

And I think that some day I shall have to make another, larger, book, to tell you more about Tom Kitten!

As for the Puddle-ducks—they went into a pond.

The clothes all came off directly, because there were no buttons.

And Mr. Drake Puddle-duck, and Jemima and Rebeccah, have been looking for them ever since.

The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck

A farmyard tale
for
Ralph and Betsy

What a funny sight it is to see a brood of ducklings with a hen!

—Listen to the story of Jemima Puddle-duck, who was annoyed because the farmer’s wife would not let her hatch her own eggs.

Her sister-in-law, Mrs. Rebeccah Puddle-duck, was perfectly willing to leave the hatching to someone else—“I have not the patience to sit on a nest for twenty-eight days; and no more have you, Jemima. You would let them go cold; you know you would!”

“I wish to hatch my own eggs; I will hatch them all by myself,” quacked Jemima Puddle-duck.

She tried to hide her eggs; but they were always found and carried off.

Jemima Puddle-duck became quite desperate. She determined to make a nest right away from the farm.

She set off on a fine spring afternoon along the cart-road that leads over the hill.

She was wearing a shawl and a poke bonnet.

When she reached the top of the hill, she saw a wood in the distance.

She thought that it looked a safe quiet spot.

Jemima Puddle-duck was not much in the habit of flying. She ran downhill a few yards flapping her shawl, and then she jumped off into the air.

She flew beautifully when she had got a good start.

She skimmed along over the treetops until she saw an open place in the middle of the wood, where the trees and brushwood had been cleared.

Jemima alighted rather heavily, and began to waddle about in search of a convenient dry nesting-place. She rather fancied a tree-stump amongst some tall foxgloves.

But—seated upon the stump, she was startled to find an elegantly dressed gentleman reading a newspaper.

He had black prick ears and sandy coloured whiskers.

“Quack?” said Jemima Puddle-duck, with her head and her bonnet on one side—“Quack?”

The gentleman raised his eyes above his newspaper and looked curiously at Jemima—

“Madam, have you lost your way?” said he. He had a long bushy tail which he was sitting upon, as the stump was somewhat damp.

Jemima thought him mighty civil and handsome. She explained that she had not lost her way, but that she was trying to find a convenient dry nesting-place.

“Ah! is that so? indeed!” said the gentleman with sandy whiskers, looking curiously at Jemima. He folded up the newspaper, and put it in his coattail pocket.

Jemima complained of the superfluous hen.

“Indeed! how interesting! I wish I could meet with that fowl. I would teach it to mind its own business!”

“But as to a nest—there is no difficulty: I have a sackful of feathers in my woodshed. No, my dear madam, you will be in nobody’s way. You may sit there as long as you like,” said the bushy long-tailed gentleman.

He led the way to a very retired, dismal-looking house amongst the foxgloves.

It was built of faggots and turf, and there were two broken pails, one on top of another, by way of a chimney.

“This is my summer residence; you would not find my earth—my winter house—so convenient,” said the hospitable gentleman.

There was a tumbledown shed at the back of the house, made of old soapboxes. The gentleman opened the door, and showed Jemima in.

The shed was almost quite full of feathers—it was almost suffocating; but it was comfortable and very soft.

Jemima Puddle-duck was rather surprised to find such a vast quantity of feathers. But it was very comfortable; and she made a nest without any trouble at all.

When she came out, the sandy whiskered gentleman was sitting on a log reading the newspaper—at least he had it spread out, but he was looking over the top of it.

He was so polite, that he seemed almost sorry to let Jemima go home for the night. He promised to take great care of her nest until she came back again next day.

He said he loved eggs and ducklings; he should be proud to see a fine nestful in his woodshed.

Jemima Puddle-duck came every afternoon; she laid nine eggs in the nest. They were greeny white and very large. The foxy gentleman admired them immensely. He used to turn them over and count them when Jemima was not there.

At last Jemima told him that she intended to begin to sit next day—“and I will bring a bag of corn with me, so that I need never leave my nest until the eggs are hatched. They might catch cold,” said the conscientious Jemima.

“Madam, I beg you not to trouble yourself with a bag; I will provide oats. But before you commence your tedious sitting, I intend to give you a treat. Let us have a dinner-party all to ourselves!

“May I ask you to bring up some herbs from the farm-garden to make a savoury omelette? Sage and thyme, and mint and two onions, and some parsley. I will provide lard for the stuff—lard for the omelette,” said the hospitable gentleman with sandy whiskers.

Jemima Puddle-duck was a simpleton: not even the mention of sage and onions made her suspicious.

She went round the farm-garden, nibbling off snippets of all the different sorts of herbs that are used for stuffing roast duck.

And she waddled into the kitchen, and got two onions out of a basket.

The collie-dog Kep met her coming out, “What are you doing with those onions? Where do you go every afternoon by yourself, Jemima Puddle-duck?”

Jemima was rather in awe of the collie; she told him the whole story.

The collie listened, with his wise head on one side; he grinned when she described the polite gentleman with sandy whiskers.

He asked several questions about the wood, and about the exact position of the house and shed.

Then he went out, and trotted down the village. He went to look for two foxhound puppies who were out at walk with the butcher.

Jemima Puddle-duck went up the cart-road for the last time, on a sunny afternoon. She was rather burdened with bunches of herbs and two onions in a bag.

She flew over the wood, and alighted opposite the house of the bushy long-tailed gentleman.

He was sitting on a log; he sniffed the air, and kept glancing uneasily round the wood. When Jemima alighted he quite jumped.

“Come into the house as soon as you have looked at your eggs. Give me the herbs for the omelette. Be sharp!”

He was rather abrupt. Jemima Puddle-duck had never heard him speak like that.

She felt surprised, and uncomfortable.

While she was inside she heard pattering feet round the back of the shed. Someone with a black nose sniffed at the bottom of the door, and then locked it.

Jemima became much alarmed.

A moment afterwards there were most awful noises—barking, baying, growls and howls, squealing and groans.

And nothing more was ever seen of that foxy-whiskered gentleman.

Presently Kep opened the door of the shed, and let out Jemima Puddle-duck.

Unfortunately the puppies rushed in and gobbled up all the eggs before he could stop them.

He had a bite on his ear and both the puppies were limping.

Jemima Puddle-duck was escorted home in tears on account of those eggs.

She laid some more in June, and she was permitted to keep them herself: but only four of them hatched.

Jemima Puddle-duck said that it was because of her nerves; but she had always been a bad sitter.

The Tale of Samuel Whiskers

Or, The Roly-Poly Pudding

In Remembrance of
“Sammy,”
The intelligent pink-eyed Representative
of
a Persecuted (but Irrepressible) Race.
An affectionate little Friend,
and most accomplished
Thief!

Once upon a time there was an old cat, called Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, who was an anxious parent. She used to lose her kittens continually, and whenever they were lost they were always in mischief!

On baking day she determined to shut them up in a cupboard.

She caught Moppet and Mittens, but she could not find Tom.

Mrs. Tabitha went up and down all over the house, mewing for Tom Kitten. She looked in the pantry under the staircase, and she searched the best spare bedroom that was all covered up with dust sheets. She went right upstairs and looked into the attics, but she could not find him anywhere.

It was an old, old house, full of cupboards and passages. Some of the walls were four feet thick, and there used to be queer noises inside them, as if there might be a little secret staircase. Certainly there were odd little jagged doorways in the wainscot, and things disappeared at night—especially cheese and bacon.

Mrs. Tabitha became more and more distracted, and mewed dreadfully.

While their mother was searching the house, Moppet and Mittens had got into mischief.

The cupboard door was not locked, so they pushed it open and came out.

They went straight to the dough which was set to rise in a pan before the fire.

They patted it with their little soft paws—“Shall we make dear little muffins?” said Mittens to Moppet.

But just at that moment somebody knocked at the front door, and Moppet jumped into the flour barrel in a fright.

Mittens ran away to the dairy, and hid in an empty jar on the stone shelf where the milk pans stand.

The visitor was a neighbour, Mrs. Ribby; she had called to borrow some yeast.

Mrs. Tabitha came downstairs mewing dreadfully—“Come in, Cousin Ribby, come in, and sit ye down! I’m in sad trouble, Cousin Ribby,” said Tabitha, shedding tears. “I’ve lost my dear son Thomas; I’m afraid the rats have got him.” She wiped her eyes with her apron.

“He’s a bad kitten, Cousin Tabitha; he made a cat’s cradle of my best bonnet last time I came to tea. Where have you looked for him?”

“All over the house! The rats are too many for me. What a thing it is to have an unruly family!” said Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit.

“I’m not afraid of rats; I will help you to find him; and whip him too! What is all that soot in the fender?”

“The chimney wants sweeping—Oh, dear me, Cousin Ribby—now Moppet and Mittens are gone!”

“They have both got out of the cupboard!”

Ribby and Tabitha set to work to search the house thoroughly again. They poked under the beds with Ribby’s umbrella, and they rummaged in cupboards. They even fetched a candle, and looked inside a clothes chest in one of the attics. They could not find anything, but once they heard a door bang and somebody scuttered downstairs.

“Yes, it is infested with rats,” said Tabitha tearfully. “I caught seven young ones out of one hole in the back kitchen, and we had them for dinner last Saturday. And once I saw the old father rat—an enormous old rat, Cousin Ribby. I was just going to jump upon him, when he showed his yellow teeth at me and whisked down the hole.”

“The rats get upon my nerves, Cousin Ribby,” said Tabitha.

Ribby and Tabitha searched and searched. They both heard a curious roly-poly noise under the attic floor. But there was nothing to be seen.

They returned to the kitchen. “Here’s one of your kittens at least,” said Ribby, dragging Moppet out of the flour barrel.

They shook the flour off her and set her down on the kitchen floor. She seemed to be in a terrible fright.

“Oh! Mother, Mother,” said Moppet, “there’s been an old woman rat in the kitchen, and she’s stolen some of the dough!”

The two cats ran to look at the dough pan. Sure enough there were marks of little scratching fingers, and a lump of dough was gone!

“Which way did she go, Moppet?”

But Moppet had been too much frightened to peep out of the barrel again.

Ribby and Tabitha took her with them to keep her safely in sight, while they went on with their search.

They went into the dairy.

The first thing they found was Mittens, hiding in an empty jar.

They tipped up the jar, and she scrambled out.

“Oh, Mother, Mother!” said Mittens—

“Oh! Mother, Mother, there has been an old man rat in the dairy—a dreadful ’normous big rat, mother; and he’s stolen a pat of butter and the rolling-pin.”

Ribby and Tabitha looked at one another.

“A rolling-pin and butter! Oh, my poor son Thomas!” exclaimed Tabitha, wringing her paws.

“A rolling-pin?” said Ribby. “Did we not hear a roly-poly noise in the attic when we were looking into that chest?”

Ribby and Tabitha rushed upstairs again. Sure enough the roly-poly noise was still going on quite distinctly under the attic floor.

“This is serious, Cousin Tabitha,” said Ribby. “We must send for John Joiner at once, with a saw.”

Now this is what had been happening to Tom Kitten, and it shows how very unwise it is to go up a chimney in a very old house, where a person does not know his way, and where there are enormous rats.

Tom Kitten did not want to be shut up in a cupboard. When he saw that his mother was going to bake, he determined to hide.

He looked about for a nice convenient place, and he fixed upon the chimney.

The fire had only just been lighted, and it was not hot; but there was a white choky smoke from the green sticks. Tom Kitten got upon the fender and looked up. It was a big old-fashioned fireplace.

The chimney itself was wide enough inside for a man to stand up and walk about. So there was plenty of room for a little Tom Cat.

He jumped right up into the fireplace, balancing himself upon the iron bar where the kettle hangs.

Tom Kitten took another big jump off the bar, and landed on a ledge high up inside the chimney, knocking down some soot into the fender.

Tom Kitten coughed and choked with the smoke; and he could hear the sticks beginning to crackle and burn in the fireplace down below. He made up his mind to climb right to the top, and get out on the slates, and try to catch sparrows.

“I cannot go back. If I slipped I might fall in the fire and singe my beautiful tail and my little blue jacket.”

The chimney was a very big old-fashioned one. It was built in the days when people burnt logs of wood upon the hearth.

The chimney stack stood up above the roof like a little stone tower, and the daylight shone down from the top, under the slanting slates that kept out the rain.

Tom Kitten was getting very frightened! He climbed up, and up, and up.

Then he waded sideways through inches of soot. He was like a little sweep himself.

It was most confusing in the dark. One flue seemed to lead into another.

There was less smoke, but Tom Kitten felt quite lost.

He scrambled up and up; but before he reached the chimney top he came to a place where somebody had loosened a stone in the wall. There were some mutton bones lying about—

“This seems funny,” said Tom Kitten. “Who has been gnawing bones up here in the chimney? I wish I had never come! And what a funny smell? It is something like mouse; only dreadfully strong. It makes me sneeze,” said Tom Kitten.

He squeezed through the hole in the wall, and dragged himself along a most uncomfortably tight passage where there was scarcely any light.

He groped his way carefully for several yards; he was at the back of the skirting-board in the attic, where there is a little mark * in the picture.

All at once he fell head over heels in the dark, down a hole, and landed on a heap of very dirty rags.

When Tom Kitten picked himself up and looked about him—he found himself in a place that he had never seen before, although he had lived all his life in the house.

It was a very small stuffy fusty room, with boards, and rafters, and cobwebs, and lath and plaster.

Opposite to him—as far away as he could sit—was an enormous rat.

“What do you mean by tumbling into my bed all covered with smuts?” said the rat, chattering his teeth.

“Please sir, the chimney wants sweeping,” said poor Tom Kitten.

“Anna Maria! Anna Maria!” squeaked the rat. There was a pattering noise and an old woman rat poked her head round a rafter.

All in a minute she rushed upon Tom Kitten, and before he knew what was happening—

His coat was pulled off, and he was rolled up in a bundle, and tied with string in very hard knots.

Anna Maria did the tying. The old rat watched her and took snuff. When she had finished, they both sat staring at him with their mouths open.

“Anna Maria,” said the old man rat (whose name was Samuel Whiskers)—“Anna Maria, make me a kitten dumpling roly-poly pudding for my dinner.”

“It requires dough and a pat of butter, and a rolling-pin,” said Anna Maria, considering Tom Kitten with her head on one side.

“No,” said Samuel Whiskers, “make it properly, Anna Maria, with breadcrumbs.”

“Nonsense! Butter and dough,” replied Anna Maria.

The two rats consulted together for a few minutes and then went away.

Samuel Whiskers got through a hole in the wainscot, and went boldly down the front staircase to the dairy to get the butter. He did not meet anybody.

He made a second journey for the rolling-pin. He pushed it in front of him with his paws, like a brewer’s man trundling a barrel.

He could hear Ribby and Tabitha talking, but they were busy lighting the candle to look into the chest.

They did not see him.

Anna Maria went down by way of the skirting-board and a window shutter to the kitchen to steal the dough.

She borrowed a small saucer, and scooped up the dough with her paws.

She did not observe Moppet.

While Tom Kitten was left alone under the floor of the attic, he wriggled about and tried to mew for help.

But his mouth was full of soot and cobwebs, and he was tied up in such very tight knots, he could not make anybody hear him.

Except a spider, which came out of a crack in the ceiling and examined the knots critically, from a safe distance.

It was a judge of knots because it had a habit of tying up unfortunate bluebottles. It did not offer to assist him.

Tom Kitten wriggled and squirmed until he was quite exhausted.

Presently the rats came back and set to work to make him into a dumpling. First they smeared him with butter, and then they rolled him in the dough.

“Will not the string be very indigestible, Anna Maria?” inquired Samuel Whiskers.

Anna Maria said she thought that it was of no consequence; but she wished that Tom Kitten would hold his head still, as it disarranged the pastry. She laid hold of his ears.

Tom Kitten bit and spat, and mewed and wriggled; and the rolling-pin went roly-poly, roly; roly, poly, roly. The rats each held an end.

“His tail is sticking out! You did not fetch enough dough, Anna Maria.”

“I fetched as much as I could carry,” replied Anna Maria.

“I do not think”—said Samuel Whiskers, pausing to take a look at Tom Kitten—“I do not think it will be a good pudding. It smells sooty.”

Anna Maria was about to argue the point, when all at once there began to be other sounds up above—the rasping noise of a saw; and the noise of a little dog, scratching and yelping!

The rats dropped the rolling-pin, and listened attentively.

“We are discovered and interrupted, Anna Maria; let us collect our property—and other people’s—and depart at once.”

“I fear that we shall be obliged to leave this pudding.”

“But I am persuaded that the knots would have proved indigestible, whatever you may urge to the contrary.”

“Come away at once and help me to tie up some mutton bones in a counterpane,” said Anna Maria. “I have got half a smoked ham hidden in the chimney.”

So it happened that by the time John Joiner had got the plank up—there was nobody under the floor except the rolling-pin and Tom Kitten in a very dirty dumpling!

But there was a strong smell of rats; and John Joiner spent the rest of the morning sniffing and whining, and wagging his tail, and going round and round with his head in the hole like a gimlet.

Then he nailed the plank down again and put his tools in his bag, and came downstairs.

The cat family had quite recovered. They invited him to stay to dinner.

The dumpling had been peeled off Tom Kitten, and made separately into a bag pudding, with currants in it to hide the smuts.

They had been obliged to put Tom Kitten into a hot bath to get the butter off.

John Joiner smelt the pudding; but he regretted that he had not time to stay to dinner, because he had just finished making a wheelbarrow for Miss Potter, and she had ordered two hen-coops.

And when I was going to the post late in the afternoon—I looked up the lane from the corner, and I saw Mr. Samuel Whiskers and his wife on the run, with big bundles on a little wheelbarrow, which looked very like mine.

They were just turning in at the gate to the barn of Farmer Potatoes.

Samuel Whiskers was puffing and out of breath. Anna Maria was still arguing in shrill tones.

She seemed to know her way, and she seemed to have a quantity of luggage.

I am sure I never gave her leave to borrow my wheelbarrow!

They went into the barn, and hauled their parcels with a bit of string to the top of the hay mow.

After that, there were no more rats for a long time at Tabitha Twitchit’s.

As for Farmer Potatoes, he has been driven nearly distracted. There are rats, and rats, and rats in his barn! They eat up the chicken food, and steal the oats and bran, and make holes in the meal bags.

And they are all descended from Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Whiskers—children and grandchildren and great great grandchildren.

There is no end to them!

Moppet and Mittens have grown up into very good rat-catchers.

They go out rat-catching in the village, and they find plenty of employment. They charge so much a dozen, and earn their living very comfortably.

They hang up the rats’ tails in a row on the barn door, to show how many they have caught—dozens and dozens of them.

But Tom Kitten has always been afraid of a rat; he never durst face anything that is bigger than—

A Mouse.

The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies

For all little friends
of
Mr. McGregor & Peter & Benjamin

It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is “soporific.”

I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces; but then I am not a rabbit.

They certainly had a very soporific effect upon the Flopsy Bunnies!

When Benjamin Bunny grew up, he married his Cousin Flopsy. They had a large family, and they were very improvident and cheerful.

I do not remember the separate names of their children; they were generally called the “Flopsy Bunnies.”

As there was not always quite enough to eat—Benjamin used to borrow cabbages from Flopsy’s brother, Peter Rabbit, who kept a nursery garden.

Sometimes Peter Rabbit had no cabbages to spare.

When this happened, the Flopsy Bunnies went across the field to a rubbish heap, in the ditch outside Mr. McGregor’s garden.

Mr. McGregor’s rubbish heap was a mixture. There were jam pots and paper bags, and mountains of chopped grass from the mowing machine (which always tasted oily), and some rotten vegetable marrows and an old boot or two. One day—oh joy!—there were a quantity of overgrown lettuces, which had “shot” into flower.

The Flopsy Bunnies simply stuffed lettuces. By degrees, one after another, they were overcome with slumber, and lay down in the mown grass.

Benjamin was not so much overcome as his children. Before going to sleep he was sufficiently wide awake to put a paper bag over his head to keep off the flies.

The little Flopsy Bunnies slept delightfully in the warm sun. From the lawn beyond the garden came the distant clacketty sound of the mowing machine. The bluebottles buzzed about the wall, and a little old mouse picked over the rubbish among the jam pots.

(I can tell you her name, she was called Thomasina Tittlemouse, a wood mouse with a long tail.)

She rustled across the paper bag, and awakened Benjamin Bunny.

The mouse apologized profusely, and said that she knew Peter Rabbit.

While she and Benjamin were talking, close under the wall, they heard a heavy tread above their heads; and suddenly Mr. McGregor emptied out a sackful of lawn mowings right upon the top of the sleeping Flopsy Bunnies! Benjamin shrank down under his paper bag. The mouse hid in a jam pot.

The little rabbits smiled sweetly in their sleep under the shower of grass; they did not awake because the lettuces had been so soporific.

They dreamt that their mother Flopsy was tucking them up in a hay bed.

Mr. McGregor looked down after emptying his sack. He saw some funny little brown tips of ears sticking up through the lawn mowings. He stared at them for some time.

Presently a fly settled on one of them and it moved.

Mr. McGregor climbed down on to the rubbish heap—

“One, two, three, four! five! six leetle rabbits!” said he as he dropped them into his sack. The Flopsy Bunnies dreamt that their mother was turning them over in bed. They stirred a little in their sleep, but still they did not wake up.

Mr. McGregor tied up the sack and left it on the wall.

He went to put away the mowing machine.

While he was gone, Mrs. Flopsy Bunny (who had remained at home) came across the field.

She looked suspiciously at the sack and wondered where everybody was?

Then the mouse came out of her jam pot, and Benjamin took the paper bag off his head, and they told the doleful tale.

Benjamin and Flopsy were in despair, they could not undo the string.

But Mrs. Tittlemouse was a resourceful person. She nibbled a hole in the bottom corner of the sack.

The little rabbits were pulled out and pinched to wake them.

Their parents stuffed the empty sack with three rotten vegetable marrows, an old blacking-brush and two decayed turnips.

Then they all hid under a bush and watched for Mr. McGregor.

Mr. McGregor came back and picked up the sack, and carried it off.

He carried it hanging down, as if it were rather heavy.

The Flopsy Bunnies followed at a safe distance.

They watched him go into his house.

And then they crept up to the window to listen.

Mr. McGregor threw down the sack on the stone floor in a way that would have been extremely painful to the Flopsy Bunnies, if they had happened to have been inside it.

They could hear him drag his chair on the flags, and chuckle—

“One, two, three, four, five, six leetle rabbits!” said Mr. McGregor.

“Eh? What’s that? What have they been spoiling now?” enquired Mrs. McGregor.

“One, two, three, four, five, six leetle fat rabbits!” repeated Mr. McGregor, counting on his fingers—“one, two, three—”

“Don’t you be silly; what do you mean, you silly old man?”

“In the sack! one, two, three, four, five, six!” replied Mr. McGregor.

(The youngest Flopsy Bunny got upon the windowsill.)

Mrs. McGregor took hold of the sack and felt it. She said she could feel six, but they must be old rabbits, because they were so hard and all different shapes.

“Not fit to eat; but the skins will do fine to line my old cloak.”

“Line your old cloak?” shouted Mr. McGregor—“I shall sell them and buy myself baccy!”

“Rabbit tobacco! I shall skin them and cut off their heads.”

Mrs. McGregor untied the sack and put her hand inside.

When she felt the vegetables she became very very angry. She said that Mr. McGregor had “done it a purpose.”

And Mr. McGregor was very angry too. One of the rotten marrows came flying through the kitchen window, and hit the youngest Flopsy Bunny.

It was rather hurt.

Then Benjamin and Flopsy thought that it was time to go home.

So Mr. McGregor did not get his tobacco, and Mrs. McGregor did not get her rabbit skins.

But next Christmas Thomasina Tittlemouse got a present of enough rabbit-wool to make herself a cloak and a hood, and a handsome muff and a pair of warm mittens.

The Tale of Ginger and Pickles

Dedicated
With very kind regards to old Mr. John Taylor,
who “thinks he might pass as a Dormouse;”
(three years in bed and never a grumble!)

Once upon a time there was a village shop. The name over the window was “Ginger and Pickles.”

It was a little small shop just the right size for Dolls—Lucinda and Jane Doll-cook always bought their groceries at Ginger and Pickles.

The counter inside was a convenient height for rabbits. Ginger and Pickles sold red spotty pocket-handkerchiefs at a penny three farthings.

They also sold sugar, and snuff and galoshes.

In fact, although it was such a small shop it sold nearly everything—except a few things that you want in a hurry—like bootlaces, hairpins and mutton chops.

Ginger and Pickles were the people who kept the shop. Ginger was a yellow tomcat, and Pickles was a terrier.

The rabbits were always a little bit afraid of Pickles.

The shop was also patronized by mice—only the mice were rather afraid of Ginger.

Ginger usually requested Pickles to serve them, because he said it made his mouth water.

“I cannot bear,” said he, “to see them going out at the door carrying their little parcels.”

“I have the same feeling about rats,” replied Pickles, “but it would never do to eat our own customers; they would leave us and go to Tabitha Twitchit’s.”

“On the contrary, they would go nowhere,” replied Ginger gloomily.

(Tabitha Twitchit kept the only other shop in the village. She did not give credit.)

Ginger and Pickles gave unlimited credit.

Now the meaning of “credit” is this—when a customer buys a bar of soap, instead of the customer pulling out a purse and paying for it—she says she will pay another time.

And Pickles makes a low bow and says, “With pleasure, madam,” and it is written down in a book.

The customers come again and again, and buy quantities, in spite of being afraid of Ginger and Pickles.

But there is no money in what is called the “till.”

The customers came in crowds every day and bought quantities, especially the toffee customers. But there was always no money; they never paid for as much as a pennyworth of peppermints.

But the sales were enormous, ten times as large as Tabitha Twitchit’s.

As there was always no money, Ginger and Pickles were obliged to eat their own goods.

Pickles ate biscuits and Ginger ate a dried haddock.

They ate them by candlelight after the shop was closed.

When it came to Jan. 1st there was still no money, and Pickles was unable to buy a dog licence.

“It is very unpleasant, I am afraid of the police,” said Pickles.

“It is your own fault for being a terrier; I do not require a licence, and neither does Kep, the Collie dog.”

“It is very uncomfortable, I am afraid I shall be summoned. I have tried in vain to get a licence upon credit at the Post Office;” said Pickles. “The place is full of policemen. I met one as I was coming home.”

“Let us send in the bill again to Samuel Whiskers, Ginger, he owes 22/9 for bacon.”

“I do not believe that he intends to pay at all,” replied Ginger.

“And I feel sure that Anna Maria pockets things—Where are all the cream crackers?”

“You have eaten them yourself,” replied Ginger.

Ginger and Pickles retired into the back parlour.

They did accounts. They added up sums and sums, and sums.

“Samuel Whiskers has run up a bill as long as his tail; he has had an ounce and three-quarters of snuff since October.”

“What is seven pounds of butter at 1/3, and a stick of sealing wax and four matches?”

“Send in all the bills again to everybody ‘with compts,’ ” replied Ginger.

After a time they heard a noise in the shop, as if something had been pushed in at the door. They came out of the back parlour. There was an envelope lying on the counter, and a policeman writing in a notebook!

Pickles nearly had a fit, he barked and he barked and made little rushes.

“Bite him, Pickles! bite him!” spluttered Ginger behind a sugar-barrel, “he’s only a German doll!”

The policeman went on writing in his notebook; twice he put his pencil in his mouth, and once he dipped it in the treacle.

Pickles barked till he was hoarse. But still the policeman took no notice. He had bead eyes, and his helmet was sewed on with stitches.

At length on his last little rush—Pickles found that the shop was empty. The policeman had disappeared.

But the envelope remained.

“Do you think that he has gone to fetch a real live policeman? I am afraid it is a summons,” said Pickles.

“No,” replied Ginger, who had opened the envelope, “it is the rates and taxes, £3 19 11¾.”

“This is the last straw,” said Pickles, “let us close the shop.”

They put up the shutters, and left. But they have not removed from the neighbourhood. In fact some people wish they had gone further.

Ginger is living in the warren. I do not know what occupation he pursues; he looks stout and comfortable.

Pickles is at present a gamekeeper.

The closing of the shop caused great inconvenience. Tabitha Twitchit immediately raised the price of everything a halfpenny; and she continued to refuse to give credit.

Of course there are the tradesmen’s carts—the butcher, the fish-man and Timothy Baker.

But a person cannot live on “seed wigs” and sponge-cake and butter-buns—not even when the sponge-cake is as good as Timothy’s!

After a time Mr. John Dormouse and his daughter began to sell peppermints and candles.

But they did not keep “self-fitting sixes”; and it takes five mice to carry one seven inch candle.

Besides—the candles which they sell behave very strangely in warm weather.

And Miss Dormouse refused to take back the ends when they were brought back to her with complaints.

And when Mr. John Dormouse was complained to, he stayed in bed, and would say nothing but “very snug;” which is not the way to carry on a retail business.

So everybody was pleased when Sally Henny Penny sent out a printed poster to say that she was going to reopen the shop—“Henny’s Opening Sale! Grand cooperative Jumble! Penny’s penny prices! Come buy, come try, come buy!”

The poster really was most ’ticing.

There was a rush upon the opening day. The shop was crammed with customers, and there were crowds of mice upon the biscuit canisters.

Sally Henny Penny gets rather flustered when she tries to count out change, and she insists on being paid cash; but she is quite harmless.

And she has laid in a remarkable assortment of bargains.

There is something to please everybody.

The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse

Nellie’s
little book

Once upon a time there was a wood mouse, and her name was Mrs. Tittlemouse.

She lived in a bank under a hedge.

Such a funny house! There were yards and yards of sandy passages, leading to storerooms and nut-cellars and seed-cellars, all amongst the roots of the hedge.

There was a kitchen, a parlour, a pantry, and a larder.

Also, there was Mrs. Tittlemouse’s bedroom, where she slept in a little box bed!

Mrs. Tittlemouse was a most terribly tidy particular little mouse, always sweeping and dusting the soft sandy floors.

Sometimes a beetle lost its way in the passages.

“Shuh! shuh! little dirty feet!” said Mrs. Tittlemouse, clattering her dustpan.

And one day a little old woman ran up and down in a red spotty cloak.

“Your house is on fire, Mother Ladybird! Fly away home to your children!”

Another day, a big fat spider came in to shelter from the rain.

“Beg pardon, is this not Miss Muffet’s?”

“Go away, you bold bad spider! Leaving ends of cobweb all over my nice clean house!”

She bundled the spider out at a window.

He let himself down the hedge with a long thin bit of string.

Mrs. Tittlemouse went on her way to a distant storeroom, to fetch cherrystones and thistledown seed for dinner.

All along the passage she sniffed, and looked at the floor.

“I smell a smell of honey; is it the cowslips outside, in the hedge? I am sure I can see the marks of little dirty feet.”

Suddenly round a corner, she met Babbitty Bumble—“Zizz, Bizz, Bizzz!” said the bumble bee.

Mrs. Tittlemouse looked at her severely. She wished that she had a broom.

“Good day, Babbitty Bumble; I should be glad to buy some beeswax. But what are you doing down here? Why do you always come in at a window, and say Zizz, Bizz, Bizzz?” Mrs. Tittlemouse began to get cross.

“Zizz, Wizz, Wizzz!” replied Babbitty Bumble in a peevish squeak. She sidled down a passage, and disappeared into a storeroom which had been used for acorns.

Mrs. Tittlemouse had eaten the acorns before Christmas; the storeroom ought to have been empty.

But it was full of untidy dry moss.

Mrs. Tittlemouse began to pull out the moss. Three or four other bees put their heads out, and buzzed fiercely.

“I am not in the habit of letting lodgings; this is an intrusion!” said Mrs. Tittlemouse. “I will have them turned out—” “Buzz! Buzz! Buzzz!”—“I wonder who would help me?” “Bizz, Wizz, Wizzz!”

—“I will not have Mr. Jackson; he never wipes his feet.”

Mrs. Tittlemouse decided to leave the bees till after dinner.

When she got back to the parlour, she heard someone coughing in a fat voice; and there sat Mr. Jackson himself!

He was sitting all over a small rocking-chair, twiddling his thumbs and smiling, with his feet on the fender.

He lived in a drain below the hedge, in a very dirty wet ditch.

“How do you do, Mr. Jackson? Deary me, you have got very wet!”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mrs. Tittlemouse! I’ll sit awhile and dry myself,” said Mr. Jackson.

He sat and smiled, and the water dripped off his coat tails. Mrs. Tittlemouse went round with a mop.

He sat such a while that he had to be asked if he would take some dinner?

First she offered him cherrystones. “Thank you, thank you, Mrs. Tittlemouse! No teeth, no teeth, no teeth!” said Mr. Jackson.

He opened his mouth most unnecessarily wide; he certainly had not a tooth in his head.

Then she offered him thistledown seed—“Tiddly, widdly, widdly! Pouff, pouff, puff!” said Mr. Jackson. He blew the thistledown all over the room.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mrs. Tittlemouse! Now what I really—really should like—would be a little dish of honey!”

“I am afraid I have not got any, Mr. Jackson,” said Mrs. Tittlemouse.

“Tiddly, widdly, widdly, Mrs. Tittlemouse!” said the smiling Mr. Jackson, “I can smell it; that is why I came to call.”

Mr. Jackson rose ponderously from the table, and began to look into the cupboards.

Mrs. Tittlemouse followed him with a dishcloth, to wipe his large wet footmarks off the parlour floor.

When he had convinced himself that there was no honey in the cupboards, he began to walk down the passage.

“Indeed, indeed, you will stick fast, Mr. Jackson!”

“Tiddly, widdly, widdly, Mrs. Tittlemouse!”

First he squeezed into the pantry.

“Tiddly, widdly, widdly? no honey? no honey, Mrs. Tittlemouse?”

There were three creepy-crawly people hiding in the plate-rack. Two of them got away; but the littlest one he caught.

Then he squeezed into the larder. Miss Butterfly was tasting the sugar; but she flew away out of the window.

“Tiddly, widdly, widdly, Mrs. Tittlemouse; you seem to have plenty of visitors!”

“And without any invitation!” said Mrs. Thomasina Tittlemouse.

They went along the sandy passage—“Tiddly widdly—” “Buzz! Wizz! Wizz!”

He met Babbitty round a corner, and snapped her up, and put her down again.

“I do not like bumble bees. They are all over bristles,” said Mr. Jackson, wiping his mouth with his coat-sleeve.

“Get out, you nasty old toad!” shrieked Babbitty Bumble.

“I shall go distracted!” scolded Mrs. Tittlemouse.

She shut herself up in the nut-cellar while Mr. Jackson pulled out the bees-nest. He seemed to have no objection to stings.

When Mrs. Tittlemouse ventured to come out—everybody had gone away.

But the untidiness was something dreadful—“Never did I see such a mess—smears of honey; and moss, and thistledown—and marks of big and little dirty feet—all over my nice clean house!”

She gathered up the moss and the remains of the beeswax.

Then she went out and fetched some twigs, to partly close up the front door.

“I will make it too small for Mr. Jackson!”

She fetched soft soap, and flannel, and a new scrubbing brush from the storeroom. But she was too tired to do any more. First she fell asleep in her chair, and then she went to bed.

“Will it ever be tidy again?” said poor Mrs. Tittlemouse.

Next morning she got up very early and began a spring cleaning which lasted a fortnight.

She swept, and scrubbed, and dusted; and she rubbed up the furniture with beeswax, and polished her little tin spoons.

When it was all beautifully neat and clean, she gave a party to five other little mice, without Mr. Jackson.

He smelt the party and came up the bank, but he could not squeeze in at the door.

So they handed him out acorn-cupfuls of honeydew through the window, and he was not at all offended.

He sat outside in the sun, and said—“Tiddly, widdly, widdly! Your very good health, Mrs. Tittlemouse!”

The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes

For
many unknown little friends,
including Monica.

Once upon a time there was a little fat comfortable grey squirrel, called Timmy Tiptoes. He had a nest thatched with leaves in the top of a tall tree; and he had a little squirrel wife called Goody.

Timmy Tiptoes sat out, enjoying the breeze; he whisked his tail and chuckled—“Little wife Goody, the nuts are ripe; we must lay up a store for winter and spring.” Goody Tiptoes was busy pushing moss under the thatch—“The nest is so snug, we shall be sound asleep all winter.” “Then we shall wake up all the thinner, when there is nothing to eat in springtime,” replied prudent Timothy.

When Timmy and Goody Tiptoes came to the nut thicket, they found other squirrels were there already.

Timmy took off his jacket and hung it on a twig; they worked away quietly by themselves.

Every day they made several journeys and picked quantities of nuts. They carried them away in bags, and stored them in several hollow stumps near the tree where they had built their nest.

When these stumps were full, they began to empty the bags into a hole high up a tree, that had belonged to a woodpecker; the nuts rattled down—down—down inside.

“How shall you ever get them out again? It is like a money-box!” said Goody.

“I shall be much thinner before springtime, my love,” said Timmy Tiptoes, peeping into the hole.

They did collect quantities—because they did not lose them! Squirrels who bury their nuts in the ground lose more than half, because they cannot remember the place.

The most forgetful squirrel in the wood was called Silvertail. He began to dig, and he could not remember. And then he dug again and found some nuts that did not belong to him; and there was a fight. And other squirrels began to dig—the whole wood was in commotion!

Unfortunately, just at this time a flock of little birds flew by, from bush to bush, searching for green caterpillars and spiders. There were several sorts of little birds, twittering different songs.

The first one sang—“Who’s bin digging-up my nuts? Who’s-been-digging-up my nuts?”

And another sang—“Little bita bread and-no-cheese! Little bit-a-bread an’-no-cheese!”

The squirrels followed and listened. The first little bird flew into the bush where Timmy and Goody Tiptoes were quietly tying up their bags, and it sang—“Who’s-bin digging-up my nuts? Who’s been digging-up my-nuts?”

Timmy Tiptoes went on with his work without replying; indeed, the little bird did not expect an answer. It was only singing its natural song, and it meant nothing at all.

But when the other squirrels heard that song, they rushed upon Timmy Tiptoes and cuffed and scratched him, and upset his bag of nuts. The innocent little bird which had caused all the mischief, flew away in a fright!

Timmy rolled over and over, and then turned tail and fled towards his nest, followed by a crowd of squirrels shouting—“Who’s-been digging-up my-nuts?”

They caught him and dragged him up the very same tree, where there was the little round hole, and they pushed him in. The hole was much too small for Timmy Tiptoes’ figure. They squeezed him dreadfully, it was a wonder they did not break his ribs. “We will leave him here till he confesses,” said Silvertail Squirrel, and he shouted into the hole—

“Who’s-been-digging-up my-nuts?”

Timmy Tiptoes made no reply; he had tumbled down inside the tree, upon half a peck of nuts belonging to himself. He lay quite stunned and still.

Goody Tiptoes picked up the nut bags and went home. She made a cup of tea for Timmy; but he didn’t come and didn’t come.

Goody Tiptoes passed a lonely and unhappy night. Next morning she ventured back to the nut-bushes to look for him; but the other unkind squirrels drove her away.

She wandered all over the wood, calling—

“Timmy Tiptoes! Timmy Tiptoes! Oh, where is Timmy Tiptoes?”

In the meantime Timmy Tiptoes came to his senses. He found himself tucked up in a little moss bed, very much in the dark, feeling sore; it seemed to be under ground. Timmy coughed and groaned, because his ribs hurted him. There was a chirpy noise, and a small striped Chipmunk appeared with a night light, and hoped he felt better?

It was most kind to Timmy Tiptoes; it lent him its nightcap; and the house was full of provisions.

The Chipmunk explained that it had rained nuts through the top of the tree—“Besides, I found a few buried!” It laughed and chuckled when it heard Timmy’s story. While Timmy was confined to bed, it ’ticed him to eat quantities—“But how shall I ever get out through that hole unless I thin myself? My wife will be anxious!” “Just another nut—or two nuts; let me crack them for you,” said the Chipmunk. Timmy Tiptoes grew fatter and fatter!

Now Goody Tiptoes had set to work again by herself. She did not put any more nuts into the woodpecker’s hole, because she had always doubted how they could be got out again. She hid them under a tree root; they rattled down, down, down. Once when Goody emptied an extra big bagful, there was a decided squeak; and next time Goody brought another bagful, a little striped Chipmunk scrambled out in a hurry.

“It is getting perfectly full-up downstairs; the sitting-room is full, and they are rolling along the passage; and my husband, Chippy Hackee, has run away and left me. What is the explanation of these showers of nuts?”

“I am sure I beg your pardon; I did not know that anybody lived here,” said Mrs. Goody Tiptoes; “but where is Chippy Hackee? My husband, Timmy Tiptoes, has run away too.” “I know where Chippy is; a little bird told me,” said Mrs. Chippy Hackee.

She led the way to the woodpecker’s tree, and they listened at the hole.

Down below there was a noise of nut crackers, and a fat squirrel voice and a thin squirrel voice were singing together—

“My little old man and I fell out,
How shall we bring this matter about?
Bring it about as well as you can,
And get you gone, you little old man!”

“You could squeeze in, through that little round hole,” said Goody Tiptoes. “Yes, I could,” said the Chipmunk, “but my husband, Chippy Hackee, bites!”

Down below there was a noise of cracking nuts and nibbling; and then the fat squirrel voice and the thin squirrel voice sang—

“For the diddlum day
Day diddle dum di!
Day diddle diddle dum day!”

Then Goody peeped in at the hole, and called down—“Timmy Tiptoes! Oh fie, Timmy Tiptoes!” And Timmy replied, “Is that you, Goody Tiptoes? Why, certainly!”

He came up and kissed Goody through the hole; but he was so fat that he could not get out.

Chippy Hackee was not too fat, but he did not want to come; he stayed down below and chuckled.

And so it went on for a fortnight; till a big wind blew off the top of the tree, and opened up the hole and let in the rain.

Then Timmy Tiptoes came out, and went home with an umbrella.

But Chippy Hackee continued to camp out for another week, although it was uncomfortable.

At last a large bear came walking through the wood. Perhaps he also was looking for nuts; he seemed to be sniffing around.

Chippy Hackee went home in a hurry!

And when Chippy Hackee got home, he found he had caught a cold in his head; and he was more uncomfortable still.

And now Timmy and Goody Tiptoes keep their nut-store fastened up with a little padlock.

And whenever that little bird sees the Chipmunks, he sings—“Who’s-been-digging-up my-nuts? Who’s been digging-up my-nuts?” But nobody ever answers!

The Tale of Mr. Tod

For
Francis William of Ulva
—someday!

I have made many books about well-behaved people. Now, for a change, I am going to make a story about two disagreeable people, called Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod.

Nobody could call Mr. Tod “nice.” The rabbits could not bear him; they could smell him half a mile off. He was of a wandering habit and he had foxey whiskers; they never knew where he would be next.

One day he was living in a stick-house in the coppice, causing terror to the family of old Mr. Benjamin Bouncer. Next day he moved into a pollard willow near the lake, frightening the wild ducks and the water rats.

In winter and early spring he might generally be found in an earth amongst the rocks at the top of Bull Banks, under Oatmeal Crag.

He had half a dozen houses, but he was seldom at home.

The houses were not always empty when Mr. Tod moved out; because sometimes Tommy Brock moved in; (without asking leave).

Tommy Brock was a short bristly fat waddling person with a grin; he grinned all over his face. He was not nice in his habits. He ate wasp nests and frogs and worms; and he waddled about by moonlight, digging things up.

His clothes were very dirty; and as he slept in the daytime, he always went to bed in his boots. And the bed which he went to bed in, was generally Mr. Tod’s.

Now Tommy Brock did occasionally eat rabbit-pie; but it was only very little young ones occasionally, when other food was really scarce. He was friendly with old Mr. Bouncer; they agreed in disliking the wicked otters and Mr. Tod; they often talked over that painful subject.

Old Mr. Bouncer was stricken in years. He sat in the spring sunshine outside the burrow, in a muffler; smoking a pipe of rabbit tobacco.

He lived with his son Benjamin Bunny and his daughter-in-law Flopsy, who had a young family. Old Mr. Bouncer was in charge of the family that afternoon, because Benjamin and Flopsy had gone out.

The little rabbit-babies were just old enough to open their blue eyes and kick. They lay in a fluffy bed of rabbit wool and hay, in a shallow burrow, separate from the main rabbit hole. To tell the truth—old Mr. Bouncer had forgotten them.

He sat in the sun, and conversed cordially with Tommy Brock, who was passing through the wood with a sack and a little spud which he used for digging, and some mole traps. He complained bitterly about the scarcity of pheasants’ eggs, and accused Mr. Tod of poaching them. And the otters had cleared off all the frogs while he was asleep in winter—“I have not had a good square meal for a fortnight, I am living on pignuts. I shall have to turn vegetarian and eat my own tail!” said Tommy Brock.

It was not much of a joke, but it tickled old Mr. Bouncer; because Tommy Brock was so fat and stumpy and grinning.

So old Mr. Bouncer laughed; and pressed Tommy Brock to come inside, to taste a slice of seed-cake and “a glass of my daughter Flopsy’s cowslip wine.” Tommy Brock squeezed himself into the rabbit hole with alacrity.

Then old Mr. Bouncer smoked another pipe, and gave Tommy Brock a cabbage leaf cigar which was so very strong that it made Tommy Brock grin more than ever; and the smoke filled the burrow. Old Mr. Bouncer coughed and laughed; and Tommy Brock puffed and grinned.

And Mr. Bouncer laughed and coughed, and shut his eyes because of the cabbage smoke …

When Flopsy and Benjamin came back—old Mr. Bouncer woke up. Tommy Brock and all the young rabbit-babies had disappeared!

Mr. Bouncer would not confess that he had admitted anybody into the rabbit hole. But the smell of badger was undeniable; and there were round heavy footmarks in the sand. He was in disgrace; Flopsy wrung her ears, and slapped him.

Benjamin Bunny set off at once after Tommy Brock.

There was not much difficulty in tracking him; he had left his footmark and gone slowly up the winding footpath through the wood. Here he had rooted up the moss and wood sorrel. There he had dug quite a deep hole for dog darnel; and had set a mole trap. A little stream crossed the way. Benjamin skipped lightly over dry-foot; the badger’s heavy steps showed plainly in the mud.

The path led to a part of the thicket where the trees had been cleared; there were leafy oak stumps, and a sea of blue hyacinths—but the smell that made Benjamin stop, was not the smell of flowers!

Mr. Tod’s stick house was before him and, for once, Mr. Tod was at home. There was not only a foxey flavour in proof of it—there was smoke coming out of the broken pail that served as a chimney.

Benjamin Bunny sat up, staring; his whiskers twitched. Inside the stick house somebody dropped a plate, and said something. Benjamin stamped his foot, and bolted.

He never stopped till he came to the other side of the wood. Apparently Tommy Brock had turned the same way. Upon the top of the wall, there were again the marks of badger; and some ravellings of a sack had caught on a briar.

Benjamin climbed over the wall, into a meadow. He found another mole trap newly set; he was still upon the track of Tommy Brock. It was getting late in the afternoon. Other rabbits were coming out to enjoy the evening air. One of them in a blue coat, by himself, was busily hunting for dandelions.—“Cousin Peter! Peter Rabbit, Peter Rabbit!” shouted Benjamin Bunny.

The blue coated rabbit sat up with pricked ears—

“Whatever is the matter, Cousin Benjamin? Is it a cat? or John Stoat Ferret?”

“No, no, no! He’s bagged my family—Tommy Brock—in a sack—have you seen him?”

“Tommy Brock? how many, Cousin Benjamin?”

“Seven, Cousin Peter, and all of them twins! Did he come this way? Please tell me quick!”

“Yes, yes; not ten minutes since … he said they were caterpillars; I did think they were kicking rather hard, for caterpillars.”

“Which way? which way has he gone, Cousin Peter?”

“He had a sack with something ’live in it; I watched him set a mole trap. Let me use my mind, Cousin Benjamin; tell me from the beginning.” Benjamin did so.

“My Uncle Bouncer has displayed a lamentable want of discretion for his years;” said Peter reflectively, “but there are two hopeful circumstances. Your family is alive and kicking; and Tommy Brock has had refreshment. He will probably go to sleep, and keep them for breakfast.” “Which way?” “Cousin Benjamin, compose yourself. I know very well which way. Because Mr. Tod was at home in the stick-house he has gone to Mr. Tod’s other house, at the top of Bull Banks. I partly know, because he offered to leave any message at Sister Cottontail’s; he said he would be passing.” (Cottontail had married a black rabbit, and gone to live on the hill).

Peter hid his dandelions, and accompanied the afflicted parent, who was all of a twitter. They crossed several fields and began to climb the hill; the tracks of Tommy Brock were plainly to be seen. He seemed to have put down the sack every dozen yards, to rest.

“He must be very puffed; we are close behind him, by the scent. What a nasty person!” said Peter.

The sunshine was still warm and slanting on the hill pastures. Halfway up, Cottontail was sitting in her doorway, with four or five half-grown little rabbits playing about her; one black and the others brown.

Cottontail had seen Tommy Brock passing in the distance. Asked whether her husband was at home she replied that Tommy Brock had rested twice while she watched him.

He had nodded, and pointed to the sack, and seemed doubled up with laughing.—“Come away, Peter; he will be cooking them; come quicker!” said Benjamin Bunny.

They climbed up and up;—“He was at home; I saw his black ears peeping out of the hole.” “They live too near the rocks to quarrel with their neighbours. Come on, Cousin Benjamin!”

When they came near the wood at the top of Bull Banks, they went cautiously. The trees grew amongst heaped up rocks; and there, beneath a crag—Mr. Tod had made one of his homes. It was at the top of a steep bank; the rocks and bushes overhung it. The rabbits crept up carefully, listening and peeping.

This house was something between a cave, a prison, and a tumbledown pig-stye. There was a strong door, which was shut and locked.

The setting sun made the window panes glow like red flame; but the kitchen fire was not alight. It was neatly laid with dry sticks, as the rabbits could see, when they peeped through the window.

Benjamin sighed with relief.

But there were preparations upon the kitchen table which made him shudder. There was an immense empty pie-dish of blue willow pattern, and a large carving knife and fork, and a chopper.

At the other end of the table was a partly unfolded tablecloth, a plate, a tumbler, a knife and fork, saltcellar, mustard and a chair—in short, preparations for one person’s supper.

No person was to be seen, and no young rabbits. The kitchen was empty and silent; the clock had run down. Peter and Benjamin flattened their noses against the window, and stared into the dusk.

Then they scrambled round the rocks to the other side of the house. It was damp and smelly, and overgrown with thorns and briars.

The rabbits shivered in their shoes.

“Oh my poor rabbit babies! What a dreadful place; I shall never see them again!” sighed Benjamin.

They crept up to the bedroom window. It was closed and bolted like the kitchen. But there were signs that this window had been recently open; the cobwebs were disturbed, and there were fresh dirty footmarks upon the windowsill.

The room inside was so dark, that at first they could make out nothing; but they could hear a noise—a slow deep regular snoring grunt. And as their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, they perceived that somebody was asleep on Mr. Tod’s bed, curled up under the blanket.—“He has gone to bed in his boots,” whispered Peter.

Benjamin, who was all of a twitter, pulled Peter off the windowsill.

Tommy Brock’s snores continued, grunty and regular from Mr. Tod’s bed. Nothing could be seen of the young family.

The sun had set; an owl began to hoot in the wood. There were many unpleasant things lying about, that had much better have been buried; rabbit bones and skulls, and chickens’ legs and other horrors. It was a shocking place, and very dark.

They went back to the front of the house, and tried in every way to move the bolt of the kitchen window. They tried to push up a rusty nail between the window sashes; but it was of no use, especially without a light.

They sat side by side outside the window, whispering and listening.

In half an hour the moon rose over the wood. It shone full and clear and cold, upon the house amongst the rocks, and in at the kitchen window. But alas, no little rabbit babies were to be seen!

The moonbeams twinkled on the carving knife and the pie dish, and made a path of brightness across the dirty floor.

The light showed a little door in a wall beside the kitchen fireplace—a little iron door belonging to a brick oven, of that old-fashioned sort that used to be heated with faggots of wood.

And presently at the same moment Peter and Benjamin noticed that whenever they shook the window—the little door opposite shook in answer. The young family were alive; shut up in the oven!

Benjamin was so excited that it was a mercy he did not awake Tommy Brock, whose snores continued solemnly in Mr. Tod’s bed.

But there really was not very much comfort in the discovery. They could not open the window; and although the young family was alive—the little rabbits were quite incapable of letting themselves out; they were not old enough to crawl.

After much whispering, Peter and Benjamin decided to dig a tunnel. They began to burrow a yard or two lower down the bank. They hoped that they might be able to work between the large stones under the house; the kitchen floor was so dirty that it was impossible to say whether it was made of earth or flags.

They dug and dug for hours. They could not tunnel straight on account of stones; but by the end of the night they were under the kitchen floor. Benjamin was on his back, scratching upwards. Peter’s claws were worn down; he was outside the tunnel, shuffling sand away. He called out that it was morning—sunrise; and that the jays were making a noise down below in the woods.

Benjamin Bunny came out of the dark tunnel, shaking the sand from his ears; he cleaned his face with his paws. Every minute the sun shone warmer on the top of the hill. In the valley there was a sea of white mist, with golden tops of trees showing through.

Again from the fields down below in the mist there came the angry cry of a jay—followed by the sharp yelping bark of a fox!

Then those two rabbits lost their heads completely. They did the most foolish thing that they could have done. They rushed into their short new tunnel, and hid themselves at the top end of it, under Mr. Tod’s kitchen floor.

Mr. Tod was coming up Bull Banks, and he was in the very worst of tempers. First he had been upset by breaking the plate. It was his own fault; but it was a china plate, the last of the dinner service that had belonged to his grandmother, old Vixen Tod. Then the midges had been very bad. And he had failed to catch a hen pheasant on her nest; and it had contained only five eggs, two of them addled. Mr. Tod had had an unsatisfactory night.

As usual, when out of humour, he determined to move house. First he tried the pollard willow, but it was damp; and the otters had left a dead fish near it. Mr. Tod likes nobody’s leavings but his own.

He made his way up the hill; his temper was not improved by noticing unmistakable marks of badger. No one else grubs up the moss so wantonly as Tommy Brock.

Mr. Tod slapped his stick upon the earth and fumed; he guessed where Tommy Brock had gone to. He was further annoyed by the jay bird which followed him persistently. It flew from tree to tree and scolded, warning every rabbit within hearing that either a cat or a fox was coming up the plantation. Once when it flew screaming over his head—Mr. Tod snapped at it, and barked.

He approached his house very carefully, with a large rusty key. He sniffed and his whiskers bristled. The house was locked up, but Mr. Tod had his doubts whether it was empty. He turned the rusty key in the lock; the rabbits below could hear it. Mr. Tod opened the door cautiously and went in.

The sight that met Mr. Tod’s eyes in Mr. Tod’s kitchen made Mr. Tod furious. There was Mr. Tod’s chair, and Mr. Tod’s pie dish, and his knife and fork and mustard and salt cellar and his tablecloth that he had left folded up in the dresser—all set out for supper (or breakfast)—without doubt for that odious Tommy Brock.

There was a smell of fresh earth and dirty badger, which fortunately overpowered all smell of rabbit.

But what absorbed Mr. Tod’s attention was a noise—a deep slow regular snoring grunting noise, coming from his own bed.

He peeped through the hinges of the half-open bedroom door. Then he turned and came out of the house in a hurry. His whiskers bristled and his coat-collar stood on end with rage.

For the next twenty minutes Mr. Tod kept creeping cautiously into the house, and retreating hurriedly out again. By degrees he ventured further in—right into the bedroom. When he was outside the house, he scratched up the earth with fury. But when he was inside—he did not like the look of Tommy Brock’s teeth.

He was lying on his back with his mouth open, grinning from ear to ear. He snored peacefully and regularly; but one eye was not perfectly shut.

Mr. Tod came in and out of the bedroom. Twice he brought in his walking-stick, and once he brought in the coal-scuttle. But he thought better of it, and took them away.

When he came back after removing the coal-scuttle, Tommy Brock was lying a little more sideways; but he seemed even sounder asleep. He was an incurably indolent person; he was not in the least afraid of Mr. Tod; he was simply too lazy and comfortable to move.

Mr. Tod came back yet again into the bedroom with a clothes line. He stood a minute watching Tommy Brock and listening attentively to the snores. They were very loud indeed, but seemed quite natural.

Mr. Tod turned his back towards the bed, and undid the window. It creaked; he turned round with a jump. Tommy Brock, who had opened one eye—shut it hastily. The snores continued.

Mr. Tod’s proceedings were peculiar, and rather uneasy, (because the bed was between the window and the door of the bedroom). He opened the window a little way, and pushed out the greater part of the clothes line on to the window sill. The rest of the line, with a hook at the end, remained in his hand.

Tommy Brock snored conscientiously. Mr. Tod stood and looked at him for a minute; then he left the room again.

Tommy Brock opened both eyes, and looked at the rope and grinned. There was a noise outside the window. Tommy Brock shut his eyes in a hurry.

Mr. Tod had gone out at the front door, and round to the back of the house. On the way, he stumbled over the rabbit burrow. If he had had any idea who was inside it, he would have pulled them out quickly.

His foot went through the tunnel nearly upon the top of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin, but fortunately he thought that it was some more of Tommy Brock’s work.

He took up the coil of line from the sill, listened for a moment, and then tied the rope to a tree.

Tommy Brock watched him with one eye, through the window. He was puzzled.

Mr. Tod fetched a large heavy pailful of water from the spring, and staggered with it through the kitchen into his bedroom.

Tommy Brock snored industriously, with rather a snort.

Mr. Tod put down the pail beside the bed, took up the end of rope with the hook—hesitated, and looked at Tommy Brock. The snores were almost apoplectic; but the grin was not quite so big.

Mr. Tod gingerly mounted a chair by the head of the bedstead. His legs were dangerously near to Tommy Brock’s teeth.

He reached up and put the end of rope, with the hook, over the head of the tester bed, where the curtains ought to hang.

(Mr. Tod’s curtains were folded up, and put away, owing to the house being unoccupied. So was the counterpane. Tommy Brock was covered with a blanket only.) Mr. Tod standing on the unsteady chair looked down upon him attentively; he really was a first prize sound sleeper!

It seemed as though nothing would waken him—not even the flapping rope across the bed.

Mr. Tod descended safely from the chair, and endeavoured to get up again with the pail of water. He intended to hang it from the hook, dangling over the head of Tommy Brock, in order to make a sort of shower-bath, worked by a string, through the window.

But naturally being a thin-legged person (though vindictive and sandy whiskered)—he was quite unable to lift the heavy weight to the level of the hook and rope. He very nearly overbalanced himself.

The snores became more and more apoplectic. One of Tommy Brock’s hind legs twitched under the blanket, but still he slept on peacefully.

Mr. Tod and the pail descended from the chair without accident. After considerable thought, he emptied the water into a washbasin and jug. The empty pail was not too heavy for him; he slung it up wobbling over the head of Tommy Brock.

Surely there never was such a sleeper! Mr. Tod got up and down, down and up on the chair.

As he could not lift the whole pailful of water at once, he fetched a milk jug, and ladled quarts of water into the pail by degrees. The pail got fuller and fuller, and swung like a pendulum. Occasionally a drop splashed over; but still Tommy Brock snored regularly and never moved—except one eye.

At last Mr. Tod’s preparations were complete. The pail was full of water; the rope was tightly strained over the top of the bed, and across the window sill to the tree outside.

“It will make a great mess in my bedroom; but I could never sleep in that bed again without a spring cleaning of some sort,” said Mr. Tod.

Mr. Tod took a last look at the badger and softly left the room. He went out of the house, shutting the front door. The rabbits heard his footsteps over the tunnel.

He ran round behind the house, intending to undo the rope in order to let fall the pailful of water upon Tommy Brock—

“I will wake him up with an unpleasant surprise,” said Mr. Tod.

The moment he had gone, Tommy Brock got up in a hurry; he rolled Mr. Tod’s dressing-gown into a bundle, put it into the bed beneath the pail of water instead of himself, and left the room also—grinning immensely.

He went into the kitchen, lighted the fire and boiled the kettle; for the moment he did not trouble himself to cook the baby rabbits.

When Mr. Tod got to the tree, he found that the weight and strain had dragged the knot so tight that it was past untying. He was obliged to gnaw it with his teeth. He chewed and gnawed for more than twenty minutes. At last the rope gave way with such a sudden jerk that it nearly pulled his teeth out, and quite knocked him over backwards.

Inside the house there was a great crash and splash, and the noise of a pail rolling over and over.

But no screams. Mr. Tod was mystified; he sat quite still, and listened attentively. Then he peeped in at the window. The water was dripping from the bed, the pail had rolled into a corner.

In the middle of the bed under the blanket, was a wet flattened something—much dinged in, in the middle where the pail had caught it (as it were across the tummy). Its head was covered by the wet blanket and it was not snoring any longer.

There was nothing stirring, and no sound except the drip, drop, drop drip of water trickling from the mattress.

Mr. Tod watched it for half an hour; his eyes glistened.

Then he cut a caper, and became so bold that he even tapped at the window; but the bundle never moved.

Yes—there was no doubt about it—it had turned out even better than he had planned; the pail had hit poor old Tommy Brock, and killed him dead!

“I will bury that nasty person in the hole which he has dug. I will bring my bedding out, and dry it in the sun,” said Mr. Tod.

“I will wash the tablecloth and spread it on the grass in the sun to bleach. And the blanket must be hung up in the wind; and the bed must be thoroughly disinfected, and aired with a warming-pan; and warmed with a hot-water bottle.”

“I will get soft soap, and monkey soap, and all sorts of soap; and soda and scrubbing brushes; and persian powder; and carbolic to remove the smell. I must have a disinfecting. Perhaps I may have to burn sulphur.”

He hurried round the house to get a shovel from the kitchen—“First I will arrange the hole—then I will drag out that person in the blanket. …”

He opened the door. …

Tommy Brock was sitting at Mr. Tod’s kitchen table, pouring out tea from Mr. Tod’s teapot into Mr. Tod’s teacup. He was quite dry himself and grinning; and he threw the cup of scalding tea all over Mr. Tod.

Then Mr. Tod rushed upon Tommy Brock, and Tommy Brock grappled with Mr. Tod amongst the broken crockery, and there was a terrific battle all over the kitchen. To the rabbits underneath it sounded as if the floor would give way at each crash of falling furniture.

They crept out of their tunnel, and hung about amongst the rocks and bushes, listening anxiously.

Inside the house the racket was fearful. The rabbit babies in the oven woke up trembling; perhaps it was fortunate they were shut up inside.

Everything was upset except the kitchen table.

And everything was broken, except the mantelpiece and the kitchen fender. The crockery was smashed to atoms.

The chairs were broken, and the window, and the clock fell with a crash, and there were handfuls of Mr. Tod’s sandy whiskers.

The vases fell off the mantelpiece, the canisters fell off the shelf; the kettle fell off the hob. Tommy Brock put his foot in a jar of raspberry jam.

And the boiling water out of the kettle fell upon the tail of Mr. Tod.

When the kettle fell, Tommy Brock, who was still grinning, happened to be uppermost; and he rolled Mr. Tod over and over like a log, out at the door.

Then the snarling and worrying went on outside; and they rolled over the bank, and down hill, bumping over the rocks. There will never be any love lost between Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod.

As soon as the coast was clear, Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny came out of the bushes—

“Now for it! Run in, Cousin Benjamin! Run in and get them! while I watch at the door.”

But Benjamin was frightened—

“Oh; oh! they are coming back!”

“No they are not.”

“Yes they are!”

“What dreadful bad language! I think they have fallen down the stone quarry.”

Still Benjamin hesitated, and Peter kept pushing him—

“Be quick, it’s all right. Shut the oven door, Cousin Benjamin, so that he won’t miss them.”

Decidedly there were lively doings in Mr. Tod’s kitchen!

At home in the rabbit hole, things had not been quite comfortable.

After quarrelling at supper, Flopsy and old Mr. Bouncer had passed a sleepless night, and quarrelled again at breakfast. Old Mr. Bouncer could no longer deny that he had invited company into the rabbit hole; but he refused to reply to the questions and reproaches of Flopsy. The day passed heavily.

Old Mr. Bouncer, very sulky, was huddled up in a corner, barricaded with a chair. Flopsy had taken away his pipe and hidden the tobacco. She had been having a complete turn out and spring-cleaning, to relieve her feelings. She had just finished. Old Mr. Bouncer, behind his chair, was wondering anxiously what she would do next.

In Mr. Tod’s kitchen, amongst the wreckage, Benjamin Bunny picked his way to the oven nervously, through a thick cloud of dust. He opened the oven door, felt inside, and found something warm and wriggling. He lifted it out carefully, and rejoined Peter Rabbit.

“I’ve got them! Can we get away? Shall we hide, Cousin Peter?”

Peter pricked his ears; distant sounds of fighting still echoed in the wood.

Five minutes afterwards two breathless rabbits came scuttering away down Bull Banks, half carrying half dragging a sack between them, bumpetty bump over the grass. They reached home safely and burst into the rabbit hole.

Great was old Mr. Bouncer’s relief and Flopsy’s joy when Peter and Benjamin arrived in triumph with the young family. The rabbit-babies were rather tumbled and very hungry; they were fed and put to bed. They soon recovered.

A long new pipe and a fresh supply of rabbit tobacco was presented to Mr. Bouncer. He was rather upon his dignity; but he accepted.

Old Mr. Bouncer was forgiven, and they all had dinner. Then Peter and Benjamin told their story—but they had not waited long enough to be able to tell the end of the battle between Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod.

The Tale of Pigling Bland

For
Cecily and Charlie,
A Tale of
The Christmas Pig

Once upon a time there was an old pig called Aunt Pettitoes. She had eight of a family: four little girl pigs, called Cross-patch, Suck-suck, Yock-yock and Spot; and four little boy pigs, called Alexander, Pigling Bland, Chin-chin and Stumpy. Stumpy had had an accident to his tail.

The eight little pigs had very fine appetites. “Yus, yus, yus! they eat and indeed they do eat!” said Aunt Pettitoes, looking at her family with pride. Suddenly there were fearful squeals; Alexander had squeezed inside the hoops of the pig trough and stuck.

Aunt Pettitoes and I dragged him out by the hind legs.

Chin-chin was already in disgrace; it was washing day, and he had eaten a piece of soap. And presently in a basket of clean clothes, we found another dirty little pig. “Tchut, tut, tut! whichever is this?” grunted Aunt Pettitoes.

Now all the pig family are pink, or pink with black spots, but this pig child was smutty black all over; when it had been popped into a tub, it proved to be Yock-yock.

I went into the garden; there I found Cross-patch and Suck-suck rooting up carrots. I whipped them myself and led them out by the ears. Cross-patch tried to bite me.

“Aunt Pettitoes, Aunt Pettitoes! you are a worthy person, but your family is not well brought up. Every one of them has been in mischief except Spot and Pigling Bland.”

“Yus, yus!” sighed Aunt Pettitoes. “And they drink bucketfuls of milk; I shall have to get another cow! Good little Spot shall stay at home to do the housework; but the others must go. Four little boy pigs and four little girl pigs are too many altogether.” “Yus, yus, yus,” said Aunt Pettitoes, “there will be more to eat without them.”

So Chin-chin and Suck-suck went away in a wheelbarrow, and Stumpy, Yock-yock and Cross-patch rode away in a cart.

And the other two little boy pigs, Pigling Bland and Alexander, went to market. We brushed their coats, we curled their tails and washed their little faces, and wished them goodbye in the yard.

Aunt Pettitoes wiped her eyes with a large pocket handkerchief, then she wiped Pigling Bland’s nose and shed tears; then she wiped Alexander’s nose and shed tears; then she passed the handkerchief to Spot. Aunt Pettitoes sighed and grunted, and addressed those little pigs as follows:

“Now Pigling Bland, son Pigling Bland, you must go to market. Take your brother Alexander by the hand. Mind your Sunday clothes, and remember to blow your nose”—(Aunt Pettitoes passed round the handkerchief again)—“beware of traps, hen roosts, bacon and eggs; always walk upon your hind legs.” Pigling Bland, who was a sedate little pig, looked solemnly at his mother, a tear trickled down his cheek.

Aunt Pettitoes turned to the other—“Now son Alexander take the hand”—“Wee, wee, wee!” giggled Alexander—“take the hand of your brother Pigling Bland, you must go to market. Mind—” “Wee, wee, wee!” interrupted Alexander again. “You put me out,” said Aunt Pettitoes—

“Observe signposts and milestones; do not gobble herring bones—” “And remember,” said I impressively, “if you once cross the county boundary you cannot come back. Alexander, you are not attending. Here are two licences permitting two pigs to go to market in Lancashire. Attend, Alexander. I have had no end of trouble in getting these papers from the policeman.”

Pigling Bland listened gravely; Alexander was hopelessly volatile.

I pinned the papers, for safety, inside their waistcoat pockets; Aunt Pettitoes gave to each a little bundle, and eight conversation peppermints with appropriate moral sentiments in screws of paper. Then they started.

Pigling Bland and Alexander trotted along steadily for a mile; at least Pigling Bland did. Alexander made the road half as long again by skipping from side to side. He danced about and pinched his brother, singing—

“This pig went to market, this pig stayed at home,
“This pig had a bit of meat—

let’s see what they have given us for dinner, Pigling?”

Pigling Bland and Alexander sat down and untied their bundles. Alexander gobbled up his dinner in no time; he had already eaten all his own peppermints. “Give me one of yours, please, Pigling.”

“But I wish to preserve them for emergencies,” said Pigling Bland doubtfully. Alexander went into squeals of laughter. Then he pricked Pigling with the pin that had fastened his pig paper; and when Pigling slapped him he dropped the pin, and tried to take Pigling’s pin, and the papers got mixed up. Pigling Bland reproved Alexander.

But presently they made it up again, and trotted away together, singing—

“Tom, Tom, the piper’s son, stole a pig and away he ran!
“But all the tune that he could play, was ‘Over the hills and far away!’ ”

“What’s that, young sirs? Stole a pig? Where are your licences?” said the policeman. They had nearly run against him round a corner. Pigling Bland pulled out his paper; Alexander, after fumbling, handed over something scrumply—

“To 2½ oz. conversation sweeties at three farthings”—“What’s this? This ain’t a licence.” Alexander’s nose lengthened visibly, he had lost it. “I had one, indeed I had, Mr. Policeman!”

“It’s not likely they let you start without. I am passing the farm. You may walk with me.” “Can I come back too?” inquired Pigling Bland. “I see no reason, young sir; your paper is all right.” Pigling Bland did not like going on alone, and it was beginning to rain. But it is unwise to argue with the police; he gave his brother a peppermint, and watched him out of sight.

To conclude the adventures of Alexander—the policeman sauntered up to the house about tea time, followed by a damp subdued little pig. I disposed of Alexander in the neighbourhood; he did fairly well when he had settled down.

Pigling Bland went on alone dejectedly; he came to crossroads and a signpost—“To Market Town, 5 miles,” “Over the Hills, 4 miles,” “To Pettitoes Farm, 3 miles.”

Pigling Bland was shocked, there was little hope of sleeping in Market Town, and tomorrow was the hiring fair; it was deplorable to think how much time had been wasted by the frivolity of Alexander.

He glanced wistfully along the road towards the hills, and then set off walking obediently the other way, buttoning up his coat against the rain. He had never wanted to go; and the idea of standing all by himself in a crowded market, to be stared at, pushed, and hired by some big strange farmer was very disagreeable—

“I wish I could have a little garden and grow potatoes,” said Pigling Bland.

He put his cold hand in his pocket and felt his paper, he put his other hand in his other pocket and felt another paper—Alexander’s! Pigling squealed; then ran back frantically, hoping to overtake Alexander and the policeman.

He took a wrong turn—several wrong turns, and was quite lost.

It grew dark, the wind whistled, the trees creaked and groaned.

Pigling Bland became frightened and cried “Wee, wee, wee! I can’t find my way home!”

After an hour’s wandering he got out of the wood; the moon shone through the clouds, and Pigling Bland saw a country that was new to him.

The road crossed a moor; below was a wide valley with a river twinkling in the moonlight, and beyond, in misty distance, lay the hills.

He saw a small wooden hut, made his way to it, and crept inside—“I am afraid it is a hen house, but what can I do?” said Pigling Bland, wet and cold and quite tired out.

“Bacon and eggs, bacon and eggs!” clucked a hen on a perch.

“Trap, trap, trap! cackle, cackle, cackle!” scolded the disturbed cockerel. “To market, to market! jiggetty jig!” clucked a broody white hen roosting next to him. Pigling Bland, much alarmed, determined to leave at daybreak. In the meantime, he and the hens fell asleep.

In less than an hour they were all awakened. The owner, Mr. Peter Thomas Piperson, came with a lantern and a hamper to catch six fowls to take to market in the morning.

He grabbed the white hen roosting next to the cock; then his eye fell upon Pigling Bland, squeezed up in a corner. He made a singular remark—“Hallo, here’s another!”—seized Pigling by the scruff of the neck, and dropped him into the hamper. Then he dropped in five more dirty, kicking, cackling hens upon the top of Pigling Bland.

The hamper containing six fowls and a young pig was no light weight; it was taken down hill, unsteadily, with jerks. Pigling, although nearly scratched to pieces, contrived to hide the papers and peppermints inside his clothes.

At last the hamper was bumped down upon a kitchen floor, the lid was opened, and Pigling was lifted out. He looked up, blinking, and saw an offensively ugly elderly man, grinning from ear to ear.

“This one’s come of himself, whatever,” said Mr. Piperson, turning Pigling’s pockets inside out. He pushed the hamper into a corner, threw a sack over it to keep the hens quiet, put a pot on the fire, and unlaced his boots.

Pigling Bland drew forward a coppy stool, and sat on the edge of it, shyly warming his hands. Mr. Piperson pulled off a boot and threw it against the wainscot at the further end of the kitchen. There was a smothered noise—“Shut up!” said Mr. Piperson. Pigling Bland warmed his hands, and eyed him.

Mr. Piperson pulled off the other boot and flung it after the first, there was again a curious noise—“Be quiet, will ye?” said Mr. Piperson. Pigling Bland sat on the very edge of the coppy stool.

Mr. Piperson fetched meal from a chest and made porridge. It seemed to Pigling that something at the further end of the kitchen was taking a suppressed interest in the cooking, but he was too hungry to be troubled by noises.

Mr. Piperson poured out three platefuls: for himself, for Pigling, and a third—after glaring at Pigling—he put away with much scuffling, and locked up. Pigling Bland ate his supper discreetly.

After supper Mr. Piperson consulted an almanac, and felt Pigling’s ribs; it was too late in the season for curing bacon, and he grudged his meal. Besides, the hens had seen this pig.

He looked at the small remains of a flitch, and then looked undecidedly at Pigling. “You may sleep on the rug,” said Mr. Peter Thomas Piperson.

Pigling Bland slept like a top. In the morning Mr. Piperson made more porridge; the weather was warmer. He looked to see how much meal was left in the chest, and seemed dissatisfied—“You’ll likely be moving on again?” said he to Pigling Bland.

Before Pigling could reply, a neighbour, who was giving Mr. Piperson and the hens a lift, whistled from the gate. Mr. Piperson hurried out with the hamper, enjoining Pigling to shut the door behind him and not meddle with nought; or “I’ll come back and skin ye!” said Mr. Piperson.

It crossed Pigling’s mind that if he had asked for a lift, too, he might still have been in time for market.

But he distrusted Peter Thomas.

After finishing breakfast at his leisure, Pigling had a look round the cottage; everything was locked up. He found some potato peelings in a bucket in the back kitchen. Pigling ate the peel, and washed up the porridge plates in the bucket. He sang while he worked—

“Tom with his pipe made such a noise,
He called up all the girls and boys—
And they all ran to hear him play,
Over the hills and far away!—”

Suddenly a little smothered voice chimed in—

“Over the hills and a great way off,
The wind shall blow my top knot off!”

Pigling Bland put down a plate which he was wiping, and listened.

After a long pause, Pigling went on tiptoe and peeped round the door into the front kitchen. There was nobody there.

After another pause, Pigling approached the door of the locked cupboard, and snuffed at the keyhole. It was quite quiet.

After another long pause, Pigling pushed a peppermint under the door. It was sucked in immediately.

In the course of the day Pigling pushed in all the remaining six peppermints.

When Mr. Piperson returned, he found Pigling sitting before the fire; he had brushed up the hearth and put on the pot to boil; the meal was not get-at-able.

Mr. Piperson was very affable; he slapped Pigling on the back, made lots of porridge and forgot to lock the meal chest. He did lock the cupboard door; but without properly shutting it. He went to bed early, and told Pigling upon no account to disturb him next day before twelve o’clock.

Pigling Bland sat by the fire, eating his supper.

All at once at his elbow, a little voice spoke—“My name is Pig-wig. Make me more porridge, please!” Pigling Bland jumped, and looked round.

A perfectly lovely little black Berkshire pig stood smiling beside him. She had twinkly little screwed up eyes, a double chin, and a short turned up nose.

She pointed at Pigling’s plate; he hastily gave it to her, and fled to the meal chest. “How did you come here?” asked Pigling Bland.

“Stolen,” replied Pig-wig, with her mouth full. Pigling helped himself to meal without scruple. “What for?” “Bacon, hams,” replied Pig-wig cheerfully. “Why on earth don’t you run away?” exclaimed the horrified Pigling.

“I shall after supper,” said Pig-wig decidedly.

Pigling Bland made more porridge and watched her shyly.

She finished a second plate, got up, and looked about her, as though she were going to start.

“You can’t go in the dark,” said Pigling Bland.

Pig-wig looked anxious.

“Do you know your way by daylight?”

“I know we can see this little white house from the hills across the river. Which way are you going, Mr. Pig?”

“To market—I have two pig papers. I might take you to the bridge; if you have no objection,” said Pigling much confused and sitting on the edge of his coppy stool. Pig-wig’s gratitude was such and she asked so many questions that it became embarrassing to Pigling Bland.

He was obliged to shut his eyes and pretend to sleep. She became quiet, and there was a smell of peppermint.

“I thought you had eaten them,” said Pigling, waking suddenly.

“Only the corners,” replied Pig-wig, studying the sentiments with much interest by the firelight.

“I wish you wouldn’t; he might smell them through the ceiling,” said the alarmed Pigling.

Pig-wig put back the sticky peppermints into her pocket; “Sing something,” she demanded.

“I am sorry … I have toothache,” said Pigling much dismayed.

“Then I will sing,” replied Pig-wig. “You will not mind if I say iddy tidditty? I have forgotten some of the words.”

Pigling Bland made no objection; he sat with his eyes half shut, and watched her.

She wagged her head and rocked about, clapping time and singing in a sweet little grunty voice—

“A funny old mother pig lived in a stye, and three little piggies had she;
“(Ti idditty idditty) umph, umph, umph! and the little pigs said, wee, wee!”

She sang successfully through three or four verses, only at every verse her head nodded a little lower, and her little twinkly eyes closed up.

“Those three little piggies grew peaky and lean, and lean they might very well be;
“For somehow they couldn’t say umph, umph, umph! and they wouldn’t say wee, wee, wee!
“For somehow they couldn’t say—

Pig-wig’s head bobbed lower and lower, until she rolled over, a little round ball, fast asleep on the hearthrug.

Pigling Bland, on tiptoe, covered her up with an antimacassar.

He was afraid to go to sleep himself; for the rest of the night he sat listening to the chirping of the crickets and to the snores of Mr. Piperson overhead.

Early in the morning, between dark and daylight, Pigling tied up his little bundle and woke up Pig-wig. She was excited and half-frightened. “But it’s dark! How can we find our way?”

“The cock has crowed; we must start before the hens come out; they might shout to Mr. Piperson.”

Pig-wig sat down again, and commenced to cry.

“Come away Pig-wig; we can see when we get used to it. Come! I can hear them clucking!”

Pigling had never said shuh! to a hen in his life, being peaceable; also he remembered the hamper.

He opened the house door quietly and shut it after them. There was no garden; the neighbourhood of Mr. Piperson’s was all scratched up by fowls. They slipped away hand in hand across an untidy field to the road.

The sun rose while they were crossing the moor, a dazzle of light over the tops of the hills. The sunshine crept down the slopes into the peaceful green valleys, where little white cottages nestled in gardens and orchards.

“That’s Westmorland,” said Pig-wig. She dropped Pigling’s hand and commenced to dance, singing—

“Tom, Tom, the piper’s son, stole a pig and away he ran!
“But all the tune that he could play, was ‘Over the hills and far away!’ ”

“Come, Pig-wig, we must get to the bridge before folks are stirring.”

“Why do you want to go to market, Pigling?” inquired Pig-wig presently.

“I don’t want; I want to grow potatoes.”

“Have a peppermint?” said Pig-wig. Pigling Bland refused quite crossly. “Does your poor toothy hurt?” inquired Pig-wig. Pigling Bland grunted.

Pig-wig ate the peppermint herself and followed the opposite side of the road. “Pig-wig! keep under the wall, there’s a man ploughing.” Pig-wig crossed over, they hurried down hill towards the county boundary.

Suddenly Pigling stopped; he heard wheels.

Slowly jogging up the road below them came a tradesman’s cart. The reins flapped on the horse’s back, the grocer was reading a newspaper.

“Take that peppermint out of your mouth, Pig-wig, we may have to run. Don’t say one word. Leave it to me. And in sight of the bridge!” said poor Pigling, nearly crying. He began to walk frightfully lame, holding Pig-wig’s arm.

The grocer, intent upon his newspaper, might have passed them, if his horse had not shied and snorted. He pulled the cart crossways, and held down his whip. “Hallo! Where are you going to?”—Pigling Bland stared at him vacantly.

“Are you deaf? Are you going to market?” Pigling nodded slowly.

“I thought as much. It was yesterday. Show me your licence?”

Pigling stared at the off hind shoe of the grocer’s horse which had picked up a stone.

The grocer flicked his whip—“Papers? Pig licence?” Pigling fumbled in all his pockets, and handed up the papers. The grocer read them, but still seemed dissatisfied. “This here pig is a young lady; is her name Alexander?” Pig-wig opened her mouth and shut it again; Pigling coughed asthmatically.

The grocer ran his finger down the advertisement column of his newspaper—“Lost, stolen or strayed, 10s. reward.” He looked suspiciously at Pig-wig. Then he stood up in the trap, and whistled for the ploughman.

“You wait here while I drive on and speak to him,” said the grocer, gathering up the reins. He knew that pigs are slippery; but surely, such a very lame pig could never run!

“Not yet, Pig-wig, he will look back.” The grocer did so; he saw the two pigs stock-still in the middle of the road. Then he looked over at his horse’s heels; it was lame also; the stone took some time to knock out, after he got to the ploughman.

“Now, Pig-wig, now!” said Pigling Bland.

Never did any pigs run as these pigs ran! They raced and squealed and pelted down the long white hill towards the bridge. Little fat Pig-wig’s petticoats fluttered, and her feet went pitter, patter, pitter, as she bounded and jumped.

They ran, and they ran, and they ran down the hill, and across a shortcut on level green turf at the bottom, between pebble beds and rushes.

They came to the river, they came to the bridge—they crossed it hand in hand—

then over the hills and far away she danced with Pigling Bland!

The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse

To Aesop in the shadows

Johnny Town-mouse was born in a cupboard. Timmy Willie was born in a garden. Timmy Willie was a little country mouse who went to town by mistake in a hamper. The gardener sent vegetables to town once a week by carrier; he packed them in a big hamper.

The gardener left the hamper by the garden gate, so that the carrier could pick it up when he passed. Timmy Willie crept in through a hole in the wickerwork, and after eating some peas—Timmy Willie fell fast asleep.

He awoke in a fright, while the hamper was being lifted into the carrier’s cart. Then there was a jolting, and a clattering of horse’s feet; other packages were thrown in; for miles and miles—jolt—jolt—jolt! and Timmy Willie trembled amongst the jumbled up vegetables.

At last the cart stopped at a house, where the hamper was taken out, carried in, and set down. The cook gave the carrier sixpence; the back door banged, and the cart rumbled away. But there was no quiet; there seemed to be hundreds of carts passing. Dogs barked; boys whistled in the street; the cook laughed, the parlour maid ran up and downstairs; and a canary sang like a steam engine.

Timmy Willie, who had lived all his life in a garden, was almost frightened to death. Presently the cook opened the hamper and began to unpack the vegetables. Out sprang the terrified Timmy Willie.

Up jumped the cook on a chair, exclaiming “A mouse! a mouse! Call the cat! Fetch me the poker, Sarah!” Timmy Willie did not wait for Sarah with the poker; he rushed along the skirting board till he came to a little hole, and in he popped.

He dropped half a foot, and crashed into the middle of a mouse dinner party, breaking three glasses.—“Who in the world is this?” inquired Johnny Town-mouse. But after the first exclamation of surprise he instantly recovered his manners.

With the utmost politeness he introduced Timmy Willie to nine other mice, all with long tails and white neckties. Timmy Willie’s own tail was insignificant. Johnny Town-mouse and his friends noticed it; but they were too well bred to make personal remarks; only one of them asked Timmy Willie if he had ever been in a trap?

The dinner was of eight courses; not much of anything, but truly elegant. All the dishes were unknown to Timmy Willie, who would have been a little afraid of tasting them; only he was very hungry, and very anxious to behave with company manners. The continual noise upstairs made him so nervous, that he dropped a plate. “Never mind, they don’t belong to us,” said Johnny.

“Why don’t those youngsters come back with the dessert?” It should be explained that two young mice, who were waiting on the others, went skirmishing upstairs to the kitchen between courses. Several times they had come tumbling in, squeaking and laughing; Timmy Willie learnt with horror that they were being chased by the cat. His appetite failed, he felt faint. “Try some jelly?” said Johnny Town-mouse.

“No? Would you rather go to bed? I will show you a most comfortable sofa pillow.”

The sofa pillow had a hole in it. Johnny Town-mouse quite honestly recommended it as the best bed, kept exclusively for visitors. But the sofa smelt of cat. Timmy Willie preferred to spend a miserable night under the fender.

It was just the same next day. An excellent breakfast was provided—for mice accustomed to eat bacon; but Timmy Willie had been reared on roots and salad. Johnny Town-mouse and his friends racketted about under the floors, and came boldly out all over the house in the evening. One particularly loud crash had been caused by Sarah tumbling downstairs with the tea-tray; there were crumbs and sugar and smears of jam to be collected, in spite of the cat.

Timmy Willie longed to be at home in his peaceful nest in a sunny bank. The food disagreed with him; the noise prevented him from sleeping. In a few days he grew so thin that Johnny Town-mouse noticed it, and questioned him. He listened to Timmy Willie’s story and inquired about the garden. “It sounds rather a dull place? What do you do when it rains?”

“When it rains, I sit in my little sandy burrow and shell corn and seeds from my Autumn store. I peep out at the throstles and blackbirds on the lawn, and my friend Cock Robin. And when the sun comes out again, you should see my garden and the flowers—roses and pinks and pansies—no noise except the birds and bees, and the lambs in the meadows.”

“There goes that cat again!” exclaimed Johnny Town-mouse. When they had taken refuge in the coal-cellar he resumed the conversation; “I confess I am a little disappointed; we have endeavoured to entertain you, Timothy William.”

“Oh yes, yes, you have been most kind; but I do feel so ill,” said Timmy Willie.

“It may be that your teeth and digestion are unaccustomed to our food; perhaps it might be wiser for you to return in the hamper.”

“Oh? Oh!” cried Timmy Willie.

“Why of course for the matter of that we could have sent you back last week,” said Johnny rather huffily—“did you not know that the hamper goes back empty on Saturdays?”

So Timmy Willie said goodbye to his new friends, and hid in the hamper with a crumb of cake and a withered cabbage leaf; and after much jolting, he was set down safely in his own garden.

Sometimes on Saturdays he went to look at the hamper lying by the gate, but he knew better than to get in again. And nobody got out, though Johnny Town-mouse had half promised a visit.

The winter passed; the sun came out again; Timmy Willie sat by his burrow warming his little fur coat and sniffing the smell of violets and spring grass. He had nearly forgotten his visit to town. When up the sandy path all spick and span with a brown leather bag came Johnny Town-mouse!

Timmy Willie received him with open arms. “You have come at the best of all the year, we will have herb pudding and sit in the sun.”

“H’m’m! it is a little damp,” said Johnny Town-mouse, who was carrying his tail under his arm, out of the mud.

“What is that fearful noise?” he started violently.

“That?” said Timmy Willie, “that is only a cow; I will beg a little milk, they are quite harmless, unless they happen to lie down upon you. How are all our friends?”

Johnny’s account was rather middling. He explained why he was paying his visit so early in the season; the family had gone to the seaside for Easter; the cook was doing spring cleaning, on board wages, with particular instructions to clear out the mice. There were four kittens, and the cat had killed the canary.

“They say we did it; but I know better,” said Johnny Town-mouse. “Whatever is that fearful racket?”

“That is only the lawn-mower; I will fetch some of the grass clippings presently to make your bed. I am sure you had better settle in the country, Johnny.”

“H’m’m—we shall see by Tuesday week; the hamper is stopped while they are at the seaside.”

“I am sure you will never want to live in town again,” said Timmy Willie.

But he did. He went back in the very next hamper of vegetables; he said it was too quiet!!

One place suits one person, another place suits another person. For my part I prefer to live in the country, like Timmy Willie.

Colophon

Short Fiction
was published between 1901 and 1913 by
Beatrix Potter.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Robin Whittleton,
and is based on transcriptions produced between 1996 and 2014 by
Robert Cicconetti, Ronald Holder, Emmy, David Edwards, David Newman, Melissa Er-Raqabi, Michael Ciesielski, Jason Isbell, and Distributed Proofreaders
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from
various sources.

The cover page is adapted from
Rabbits,
a painting completed circa 1720 by
Alexandre-François Desportes.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

This edition was released on
April 11, 2026, 9:22 a.m.
and is based on
revision c912bb1.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 12, 2023, 8:47 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/beatrix-potter/short-fiction.

The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.

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List of Illustrations

Mrs. Rabbit (wearing a blue dress and white apron) tucks Peter into bed. Only the tips of his ears and paws are visible.

Rabbits peek out from underneath and around the roots of a tree.

Mrs. Rabbit says goodbye to her children. Peter, in his blue coat, is looking away from Mrs. Rabbit.

Mr. McGregor, knife and fork in hand, looks at a steaming pie being brought to him by Mrs. McGregor.

Mrs. Rabbit buttons up Peter’s coat while his siblings walk away.

Mrs. Rabbit walks through the wood with her basket and umbrella. She’s wearing a red scarf, red coat, and a yellow and black striped skirt.

Peter’s siblings are picking blackberries, while blackbirds try to steal them.

Peter runs over the fields, in his blue coat.

Peter squeezes under a wooden gate, which is tugging on his coat.

Peter sits in the garden with a carrot in each paw, and another on the ground next to him. Behind him, perched on a fork handle, a robin in singing.

Peter walks through a vegetable garden, with his paws on his tummy.

Mr. McGregor kneels on the ground with a tool for planting small plants. He looks surprised to see Peter.

Peter, looking scared, runs across a green lawn, pursued by Mr. McGregor waving a rake.

One of Peter’s shoes lies under a cabbage plant, watched by a yellow bird.

Peter tumbles over, with a button on his coat stuck in a net under a gooseberry bush.

Three sparrows tweet at Peter, who is still stuck in the net and looks sad.

Peter and the three sparrows flee from underneath the sieve, leaving his blue jacket on the ground.

Peter jumps into a watering can as water splashes out of the top.

Peter’s ears stick out from the watering can, while Mr. McGregor hunts under flowerpots in the background.

Peter escapes from the potting shed, followed by Mr. McGregor’s boot. He knocks over three geraniums in pots as he jumps.

Peter stands, dripping wet, in a flowerbed, next to a robin.

Peter runs up to a closed door in a garden wall.

Peter tries to squeeze through the door, while a mouse watches him.

A white cat looks into a pond filled with goldfish, who look back. Peter is in the distance on the other side of a lawn.

Peter sits in a wheelbarrow, looking out over a field with a gate on the other side. Mr. McGregor is directly between Peter and the gate.

Peter runs down a path and under a gate. Mr. McGregor is in the distance, chasing Peter with a rake.

Peter’s blue coat and little black shoes are hanging from a stick in a vegetable garden. Three blackbirds look on, while Mr. McGregor tends to the cabbages in the background.

Peter arrives at the entrance to the family burrow. His three siblings, still in their red coats, look on.

Peter sleeps on his side, while his mother in her blue dress and white apron looks at him while cooking. His three siblings look on from the entrance to the burrow.

Mother heats some tea in a kettle over the fire, while Peter watches from his bed.

Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail hold spoons and stand around a tall blue pot and pitcher. There’s a basket of blackberries on the floor.

Two red squirrels, Nutkin and Twinkleberry, harvest hazelnuts from a tree into a small bag.

Nutkin sits on a tree branch, nibbling on a hazelnut.

Old Brown flies towards his oak-tree.

Many red squirrels run down to the edge of a lake. One is standing on a raft made of twigs on the water.

In front of a heather-covered hill, many red squirrels travel on twig rafts to an island.

Red squirrels stand in a rough circle around the owl Old Brown, who is standing asleep at the base of a tree.

A sleepy-looking Mr. Brown sits at the base of a tree with a mouse in each claw, while Nutkin jumps up and down next to him.

Squirrels sitting on a tree branch next to a reedbed place nuts in sacks, and lower them down to their cousins below.

Red squirrels carrying sacks stand in front of Old Brown, while Twinkleberry talks to him.

Nutkin stands in front of Old Brown and tickles his beak with a nettle.

Nutkin bends down in front of a door set into the base of a tree and sings into the keyhole.

Nutkin picks up acorns from a beech stump outside Old Brown’s door.

Five red squirrels fish with poles from rocks and rafts in the lake.

Nutkin runs on ahead of a line of other red squirrels, all on a grassy path running through a forest.

Four red squirrels stand around a china plate, on which is a set of leaf parcels.

Nutkin picks up a robin’s pincushion.

Three red squirrels inspect their collection of nuts.

Old Brown sits in a carved wooden chair, eating some food from a plate on a table in front of him. Nutkin peers in through the window behind him.

Nutkin stands on a rock and bowls an apple towards some fir-cones that he’s arranged.

Five red squirrels walk out of the lake, carrying an egg in a basket. Nutkin runs ahead up the shore.

Mr. Brown inspects the egg that the squirrels have brought. Nutkin has climbed up to the level of his beak and is gesturing at the egg.

Nutkin dances for the other squirrels and Old Brown. The squirrels look a little worried, and Old Brown looks more annoyed than impressed.

Old Brown shrieks with his claws out and beak open wide. The squirrels scatter away from his tree.

The squirrels peek back around the side of the tree. Old Brown can just be seen, standing still with his eyes almost closed.

Old Brown stands in the doorway to his house, with one foot on Nutkin’s neck. The other red squirrels in the background look shocked.

Nutkin, missing most of his tail, jumps down from the tree and runs off to his cousins in the distance. Old Brown peers out of the attic window after him.

Nutkin, missing half his tail, plays with his cousins on a tree branch.

A mouse in spectacles is sitting on a reel of red thread and reading a newspaper entitled “The Tailor of Gloucester.”

A tailor sits next to a window surrounded by scraps of cloth. He is sewing a piece of cloth on his lap.

A mouse in a mob cap and extremely puffy dress is holding a large magnifying glass and sitting on a large expanse of embroidered green fabric. Another mouse is peeking through a seam in the background.

The tailor walks out of his shop, leaving behind him cut pieces of cloth and some coats hanging on pegs.

The tailor walks down the snowy street. The buildings on either side are close together and overhang the road.

Simpkin the cat sits on a chair next to a dresser full of plates and jugs, with its paws on a china pot with pink decorations. Also on the chair and dresser are three mice in cage traps.

The tailor dozes in a chair in front of a wide fireplace.

The tailor stands in front of the dresser, and peers underneath a teacup.

Three mice stand on the dresser in front of the tailor. At his feet looking up at him are two more mice, while six more run away.

A lady mouse in a white dress decorated with little red flowers stands next to another mouse on the dresser next to a sugar bowl.

Simpkin the cat hisses at the tailor’s outstretched hand, while holding open a large teapot.

A mouse sits on embroidered cloth while trying to thread red thread onto a needle. In the background two mice hold the thread’s skein.

Simpkin the cat creeps out into the snowy street.

Simpkin the cat sits in the snowy street.

Simpkin the cat walks along the snowy street leaving a trail of paw-prints.

Five mice sit in a circle around the light of a candle. They are sewing mice-sized clothes.

The mice have stopped sewing to close the door of their room. Most are standing by the door, with a couple holding candles and one gathering up the clothes they have been working on.

Simpkin the cat sits on a chair next to the tailor and holds a cup on a saucer. The tailor is holding a skein of red silk.

The tailor follows Simpkin the cat down the snowy street.

In his shop, the tailor and Simpkin the cat look surprised at the finished coat.

A piece of cloth with beautifully embroidered flowers. Pinned to it is a scrap of paper on which is written in copperplate handwriting “No more twist.”

A mouse is putting the finishing touches to the embroidered cuff of a beautiful coat.

Josephine Rabbit is sitting knitting in her burrow wearing a blue dress and a red and white shawl, next to four small rabbits. Behind her hangs some bunches of herbs, and above her is a sign that reads “Josephine Rabbit, licensed to sell Tea & Tobacco.”

Benjamin Bunny sits on a grassy bank. His ears are pricked up, and he’s wearing a brown jacket and blue shoes.

Benjamin runs down a wooded path, while a carriage in the background drives away.

Benjamin’s aunt is standing at a table covered in packets and bottles. Three rabbit children stand at the end of the table.

Benjamin peers over a tree root, behind which is just visible two pointy rabbit ears.

Peter Rabbit is sitting in a hole in the ground, wrapped in a red cloth with white stripes. Next to the edge of the hole are Benjamin’s feet.

Benjamin sits on the ground next to Peter and holds his paw.

Benjamin carefully leads a sad-looking Peter by the paw away from the hole.

Benjamin and Peter look out over Mr. McGregor’s garden, and see the scarecrow made out of Peter’s clothes.

Benjamin tries to catch Peter as he falls from a pear-tree.

Benjamin inspects the footprints in the soft earth of the vegetable garden, while Peter looks worried.

Peter pulls on his blue jacket leaving bare the cross of wood that had been the scarecrow. Benjamin has put on Peter’s big blue tam-o’-shanter and is inspecting his shoes. Sparrows hop around in the background.

Peter stands looking worried, while Benjamin crouches behind him pulling up onions and putting them on the red cloth Peter had been wearing.

Benjamin walks past a lettuce and thoughtfully nibbles on the end of a leaf. He’s wearing a red and white flower in his buttonhole. In the background Peter is carrying the onions wrapped up in the red cloth.

Peter stands on a board laid on the soft earth of the vegetable garden. He’s still holding the red cloth full of onions, but the back has dropped and some of the onions have fallen out.

Benjamin and Peter walk off down the boards through the vegetable garden, overlooked by four small dormice.

Peter stands on some steps looking worried. He has dropped the edge of the cloth again, letting the onions roll away.

Peter walks between cold frames, buckets, and watering cans, holding his bundle of onions. Benjamin follows behind.

Peter and Benjamin peer around the corner of a wall. A large tabby cat wearing a red ribbon is lying asleep on the path in front of them.

The cat, with its fluffy tail held high, looks at an overturned basket.

The cat sits on top of the upturned basket, looking down at the small gap between the handle and the rest of the basket.

Old Mr. Bunny walks along the top of the garden wall. He’s wearing a purple jacket with a red and white striped waistcoat, holding a switch, and smoking a pipe.

Old Mr. Bunny dives from the wall onto the cat that is still sitting on the basket. The cat looks surprised to see him.

Old Mr. Bunny has finished scolding Benjamin, and has moved on to hitting Peter with his switch. Peter’s shoes have fallen off onto the floor.

Benjamin and Peter walk through the garden gate while crying, watched by a robin. Benjamin is clutching his bottom. Behind them walks Old Mr. Bunny, who is carrying the sack of onions and a large lettuce. The cat watches on through the window of the greenhouse.

Mr. McGregor looks at the scarecrow, which now just has a tam-o’-shanter on it. Over the garden wall peek six rabbits.

In their burrow, Peter and Cottontail fold up the red cloth, while Mrs. Rabbit holds Flopsy and Mopsy. There are bunches of herbs and vegetables on the wall behind them.

The first mouse is standing holding up a pair of gold sugar tongs in front of a plate containing a pudding. Behind, another mouse sits in front of a broken plate.

A doll in a pink dress is sitting on a red two-storey doll’s-house. In front of the house is sitting another doll in a blue dress. A skipping rope is lying on the floor, and a couple of tennis racquets are standing up behind the house.

Lucinda is talking to Jane, who is standing in the corner next to a clock and a vase of red flowers. On the floor next to them is a large cardboard box labelled “Provisions 6d.”

The box of provisions has been opened. On plates in front of it sits a range of food.

Tom Thumb is a brown mouse with big black eyes. He is peeping out of a hole in the wall next to the head of another mouse. In front of him is the corner of a red and blue rug.

From inside the wall Tom Thumb and the other mouse look through a hole.

Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca walk cautiously over the rug to the doll’s-house and peer in through the front door.

Both the mice gaze in wonder at the brightly lit front room of the doll’s-house.

The mice are sitting at a table covered in beautiful food. Tom Thumb has a fork in his left paw and a knife in his right, and is attempting to carve the ham.

Hunca Munca stares at Tom Thumb as he attempts to carve the ham.

Tom Thumb crouches on the chair as the ham and plate crashes to the floor. In the background Hunca Munca is holding up the plate of fish.

Tom Thumb smashes the plate and ham to pieces with a tiny shovel. His chair has toppled over in his rage. Hunca Munca is still holding the plate of fish.

Tom Thumb attempts to force the plate of fish into the doll’s-house fireplace. Hunca Munca is helping from on top of the mantelpiece.

Tom Thumb peeks out of the top of the doll’s-house chimney, while Hunca Munca looks out through one of the bedroom windows.

Hunca Munca is sitting on the countertop in the kitchen, and emptying a jar marked “Rice.”

Hunca Munca is sitting on a bed covered with a blue and white striped blanket and a large pile of feathers. In the background, Tom Thumb is pushing a pink dress through the window.

The two mice carefully carry the mouse-sized bolster down the stairs of the doll’s-house. Next to the bottom of the stairs stands a chest of drawers with the drawers half open and a saucepan on top.

The mice are attempting to squeeze through the hole in the wall many things they’ve taken from the doll’s-house, including a lamp, a red chest, and a mouse-sized birdcage with a green parrot in it.

The mice push a wickerwork rocking cradle with a pink blanket over the rug towards the hole in the wall.

The mice run across the rug. One is carrying a chair, and the other a brush and some puffy blue cloth. Jane and Lucinda have arrived in the doorway in a wickerwork pram with a pink coverlet.

The two dolls survey the damage to the house. Lucinda has her arms up, but Jane is completely straight as she leans.

Hunca Munca, wearing a blue dress, sits in a rocking chair holding a baby mouse. Next to her is the wickerwork cradle with a pink coverlet.

Hunca Munca, wearing a pink dress with a white apron, inspects a frying pan. Next to her are other pans, kettles, and the cradle with two baby mice in it.

A doll dressed as a policeman is guarding the door of the doll’s-house from Hunca Munca. She’s holding a baby mouse, and two more mice are peering in through the front window at Jane. Through one of the upstairs windows we can see another mouse.

Tom Thumb is standing in front of Hunca Munca and baby mouse, and explaining about the big mouse trap next to him to his other three children.

Jane and Lucinda are tucked up in bed. By the light of a small lantern, the mice are pushing a small coin into one of the red and white stockings that are hanging from the foot of the bed.

Hunca Munca is carrying a dustpan and brush, and carefully pushing open the green door of the doll’s-house.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is wearing a white mobcap with prickles poking through, a yellow skirt, a pink blouse and a white apron. She’s inspecting the bottom of an iron that she’s picked up; another stands on the side.

A girl in a long red coat with a blue hairband stands talking to a brown cat who is sitting on a box. They’re both in front of a white farm on the side of a hill. Chickens are pecking at the ground in the background.

Lucie bends down in front of the barn door to talk to a brown hen.

Lucie kneels on a stone stile while looking at the hills in the distance. Next to her are some foxgloves and a tree on which is sitting a robin.

Lucie runs along a path between stands of bracken. Down the hillside can be seen the white farm, and in the distance is a valley between big cliffs.

A little stream is running from a hole in the hillside and cascading down. A tin stands by the first little waterfall. The stream is surrounded by green plants, forget-me-nots, and daisies.

Lucie has her hands to her mouth as she looks at a small grey door built into a rock. String is tied between some small bare trees next to her.

Lucie has pushed open the door and stands in a hallway, looking slightly apprehensive. To the left of the door is a wooden chair with a purple cushion, and to the right is a wooden chest of drawers.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is standing on a step so that she can reach the cloth on the table in front of her with her hot iron. On the other side of the table is Lucie.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is wiping her left paw on her apron, and smiling. In her other paw she’s holding a basket of linen. Behind her are shelves displaying her best china: white plates, plates painted with birds, and matched pink cups and saucers.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle carefully irons Cock Robin’s red waistcoat while Lucie points at it from the other side of the table. Lucie has taken off her coat, and is wearing a pink dress with a white pinafore underneath.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle gestures at a piece of cloth patterned with flowers that’s hanging from a drying rack.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle bends down to pick up the iron that’s been heating in front of her fire.

Lucie inspects the white pinafore that Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is holding up.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle inspects a pair of long yellow stockings that she’s holding up. They’re obviously made for chicken’s feet.

Lucie and Mrs. Tiggy-winkle bend down to look at a light red handkerchief, edged with white lines and covered with white spots.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle bends over her washing basket and pulls out two small pieces of white cloth.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle dips the pieces of white cloth in a blue and white bowl. The hot iron sits next to it on a stand.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, standing on her chair, pulls down a fluffy woollen coat from a washing line for Lucie to look at.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle stands on a chair on her toes, to pin up some clothes to the lines running across her ceiling.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle and Lucie sit on a wooden bench in front of the fire, each with a cup of tea. Lucie is holding a small spoon in her left hand and sipping the tea from the cup in her right.

Lucie has gone outside, and is wearing her red coat again and holding a bundle of cloth. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle has a couple of pieces of clothing over her arm, and is bending down to slide the key under the door.

Peter and Benjamin peek out of the ferns at Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, who hands them back their clothes. Lucie looks on, holding the bundle.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle hands out clothes to three mice, a sparrow, a blue tit, and Cock Robin.

Lucie and Mrs. Tiggy-winkle walk along a path, hand in hand. In the background are hills and a wood.

Lucie stands on the stile, holding her bundle in one hand with her other hand raised questioningly.

A large brown hedgehog runs between some ferns on all fours. She’s covered in spines.

A cat is standing in a field. In the background a few cows are grazing, in front of a stone wall that borders a white farmhouse. The cat is wearing a white dress with blue rosettes, a white pinny, and a red and white striped shawl. She’s holding a jug of milk, and a plate with a pat of butter on it.

A cat in a dress sits at a table, writing a letter with a quill. On the windowsill behind her are pots of geraniums.

Duchess, a small furry black dog who is wearing a blue ribbon around her neck, is reading an invitation that has just been delivered by a postman. She’s standing on a path just inside a garden gate, in a garden filled with beautiful flowers.

Duchess stands on a box to check a bowl on the top shelf of her pantry, which is full with other bowls, boxes and baskets.

Duchess holds up a raised pie for inspection.

Ribby picks up a furry rug near the open front door of her house.

Duchess stands in front of her front door, holding a wicker basket covered by a white cloth. On either side of her grow tall orange irises.

Ribby walks down a lane between houses with a basket hung over her arm. Behind her, through an archway, Duchess can seen walking.

Ribby comes out of a shop that has a sign that reads “T. Twitchit.” Two kittens play in the alley next to the shop.

Duchess stands on a red cushioned armchair, next to a sunny window. She’s peering into a cupboard on the wall, that is full of bottles and cups.

Duchess brushes her cheek fur while sitting at her dressing table, that holds a mirror, comb and compact.

Ribby sits by the fire warming her paws. She’s wearing a pink dress with a white pinny. Next to the fire is a big teapot painted with flowers, and on the mantelpiece above are jars and knickknacks.

Duchess runs down a lane with a bunch of flowers in her mouth.

Duchess stands in the porch of Ribby’s farmhouse, clutching a bunch of pansies, stocks, and other flowers. The porch is set in from a cobbled yard, and has slate benches on either side, on which geraniums sit. Her front door is green, with a brass knocker in the shape of a cat’s head.

Duchess balances a lump on sugar on the tip of her nose, which Ribby has placed there from her sugar bowl with a small pair of tongs.

Ribby bends down in front of the over and pulls out the pie. Meanwhile, Duchess’s tail and back legs are just visible underneath the table.

Duchess watches on while Ribby cuts the pie.

Duchess carefully cuts into the pie with a knife and fork.

Ribby butters a muffin while looking over the table. A cup of tea stands next to her plate.

Ribby and Duchess sit at a table covered with dishes. Ribby is pouring from a jug into a glass, while Duchess looks down to the foot of the table to her left.

Ribby stirs sugar into her tea and gestures across the table.

Duchess stands up in her chair with her tongue hanging out. In front of her on the table is the empty pie dish.

A magpie stands outside an entrance to a barn, with a horse’s legs visible in the background. In front of it is a little blue glass bottle, and it’s holding the stopper in its beak.

Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit stands outside her shop and watches Ribby run past with a magpie alongside. She is knitting, and the ball of yarn has fallen down to the ground. Around her several kittens are playing.

Duchess sits on a chair and looks worried.

Duchess stands in a doorway, with a pie dish held in front of her.

Dr. Maggoty pushes a pill held in his beak towards Duchess, who has been cornered by both him and Ribby.

Ribby stands holding a bucket by the water pump. She’s looking at the ground in front her, where several large pieces of broken white and red pottery lie. On the hill behind her is a rose bush with yellow flowers, a magpie, several crows, and a scarecrow.

A ridged pie pan sits empty.

A frog sits on a lily-leaf fishing. He’s dressed in a white shirt, braces, white socks and black shoes, one of which is dipping in the water.

The frog is now sitting in front of the front door of a house, reading a newspaper. He’s put a red jacket on, but his right foot is still trailing in a puddle. A damselfly is perching on the top of the door.

Mr. Jeremy walks through his house, holding a blue and white jug and two matching plates. The floor is covered in water, and a snail has climbed the wall.

Mr. Jeremy walks out of the front door of his house. There are tall flowers and plants on either side.

Mr. Jeremy is digging for fishing bait with a spade. Next to him on the earth is a tin marked “Bait,” and to his right an earthworm is poking out of the ground.

Mr. Jeremy hops across the lily-leaves and flowers, holding his rod in one hand and with a basket slung over his back.

Mr. Jeremy crouches on a lily-leaf, and unties a rope from a leaf stalk that’s sticking out of the water.

Mr. Jeremy stands on his lily-leaf boat, and pushes his way into open water with a long stalk.

Mr. Jeremy sits cross-legged on his lily-leaf and carefully prepares his fishing tackle. In his right hand he’s holding his fishing rod and line, and in his left a red and white float. Next to him is his tin of bait and his basket. Behind him on a worm is making a valiant attempt to escape.

Mr. Jeremy sits on his lily-leaf with his line dangling in the water. The leaf is tied to his stalk that’s stuck in the lake bed. It has started to rain.

Mr. Jeremy sits on his lily-leaf with his legs crossed and his left foot trailing in the water. He is munching a white piece of butterfly wing and looking thoughtful.

A big brown water-beetle has swum up to the bottom of Mr. Jeremy’s lily-leaf. It is holding the end of his shoe between its front legs.

A water vole swims through the water between the lily-leaves. In the background, another stands among the reeds.

Mr. Jeremy sits on his lily-leaf with his legs crossed. He is staring intently at the float attached to his fishing line, which is sitting in the water in front of him.

Mr. Jeremy stands up and, bracing himself, hauls on his fishing rod. On the end of it he has hooked a fish that is half his size.

Mr. Jeremy falls back onto the lily-leaf. In his lap is a large stickleback with three spines and a red belly.

Mr. Jeremy sits on his lily-leaf, turned away and looking over his shoulder at the fish behind him who are leaping in and out of the water.

Mr. Jeremy sits on his lily-leaf, with his right leg trailing in the water. From underneath looms the open jaws and eye of a large fish.

The blue and grey dappled trout has grabbed Mr. Jeremy between its teeth, and is diving quickly down into the water.

The upset trout has twisted around to look at the departing Mr. Jeremy as he swims back up to the surface.

Mr. Jeremy’s head is just poking out of the water as he swims towards a lily-leaf. Behind him bubbles rise up from the bottom of the water.

Mr. Jeremy climbs out of the water and carefully up the bank. He looks a bit shocked, and is only wearing his white shirt.

Mr. Jeremy hops down the path towards his house, which is just visible in the distance.

Just as a tortoise and a newt in a morning coat arrive at Mr. Jeremy’s house, he appears at the gate fully clothed in his original red jacket and looking happy.

Sir Isaac Newton stands talking to Mr. Jeremy. He’s wearing a long grey morning coat, unbuttoned to display his waistcoat with dappled black and gold patterns.

Mr. Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise joins Sir Isaac and Mr. Jeremy’s conversation. He’s carrying a net bag filled with soft lettuce, and is wearing the gold chain that signifies his rank.

All three of the dinner companions sit around a table. Mr. Jeremy is holding a carving knife and fork over a platter on which sits a grasshopper. Mr. Ptolemy and Sir Isaac look slightly worried.

A rabbit sits on the grass, looking angry and purposeful. Its ears are standing up, and it has wrinkled its nose.

A rabbit runs from right to left. Its little white tail is sticking up, along with its whiskers.

A good rabbit sits up on a small wooden bench, in a field in front of some trees. It’s munching on the side of a carrot. Behind it, the running bad rabbit approaches.

The bad rabbit stands on the bench next to the good rabbit and reaches out for the carrot. The good rabbit looks worried.

The bad rabbit pushes over the good rabbit, grabs the carrot, and quickly puts it in its mouth.

The bad rabbit runs after the good rabbit trying to attack it. In the background on the bench the carrot lies forgotten.

The good rabbit crouches inside a hole with its ears pulled back. In the distance the outline of the bad rabbit can be seen standing on the bench.

A man with a ginger beard is walking with a shotgun under his arm. He’s wearing knee-high boots, brown trousers, a green jacket, a green hat, and has a bag slung over his shoulder.

The man has seen the bad rabbit sitting on the bench in the distance. He readies his gun.

The bad rabbit sits calmly on the bench, nibbling on the carrot it’s holding in its paw. Behind, next to a tree, creeps the man with his gun.

The man raises the gun to his shoulder and points it to the right of the picture.

A cloud of whirling lines, through which can be seen a carrot, a pair of rabbit ears, and a fluffy white tail.

The man runs up to the bench, on which is lying a white fluffy tail, a carrot, and a small pile of whiskers.

The good rabbit looks worriedly at the man with the gun running up to the bench.

Bad rabbit sprints across the grass, missing its whiskers and tail.

A tabby kitten wearing a pink bow is staring at a mouse in a green jacket who is sitting in front of her.

The tabby kitten has green eyes, and she crouches down and stares intently.

The mouse with the green jacket and a red bow-tie stands between a cupboard leg and the green skirting board, and points forwards.

Miss Moppet dives for the mouse and hits the cupboard with her head.

Miss Moppet touches her nose with her front left paw and looks shocked. In the background the Mouse peeks out from behind the cupboard.

The Mouse leans forwards and peers down. His long tail is curved up over his head.

Miss Moppet is sitting on a red cushion, with her head completely wrapped in a blue cloth so that no part of it can be seen apart from the ears.

The Mouse climbs head first down a thick red rope.

The Mouse creeps towards the tail of Miss Moppet, who has still got her head wrapped up in the blue duster.

The Mouse is close enough now to touch Miss Moppet, who is holding her head with both paws, and peeking through a small slit.

Miss Moppet pounces off the cushion and onto the back of the Mouse, who is trying to run away. She’s now wearing the duster as a headscarf.

Miss Moppet carefully bundles the Mouse up in the duster.

Miss Moppet throws the bundle up in the air. Through the slit in the duster the Mouse’s head can be seen.

Miss Moppet is holding the unwrapped blue duster in her paws and looking extremely confused.

The Mouse dances with his arms out on top of the cupboard.

A tortoiseshell cat in a pink coat is pulling a dark brown kitten along a garden path towards a house, and carrying a light grey kitten under her other arm. In front of them runs a brown kitten. The garden is full of pink and purple flowers, and the house is large and white with a covered porch.

The three kittens play, pouncing on each other and on a red flower on the ground. On the wall of the house behind them more of the red flowers are climbing, along with another plant with big square purple flowers.

Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit carries an unwilling Moppet past the wood-panelled walls towards the stairs. She’s followed by Tom who is staring up at Moppet. Mittens has already climbed up half the stairs and is rounding the corner.

A shocked Moppet is on a chair having her face vigorously scrubbed with a sponge by Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit. Behind the chair peak out the other two worried-looking kittens.

Mittens stands on the same chair, being brushed. Tom lies under the chair, swiping at her with his paws. Moppet stands in the background watching the scene.

Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit stands with a comb in her right hand, and licks the back of her left paw. Tom sits on the ground in front of her and swipes with his right paw. The other kittens are sitting on the windowsill and look shocked at his behaviour.

Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit rummages through a chest of drawers, and pulls out a pair of blue shorts. The kittens on the windowsill are already dressed in short-sleeved white pinafores, while Tom still isn’t wearing anything. On the floor lies a hat and other blue clothing.

Tom is wearing blue trousers and a blue top. They’re both obviously too small for him. Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit is looking slightly worried, and holding a needle and thread. At their feet lies a spool of blue thread and some buttons.

Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, holding a toasting fork, shoos the kittens out of the house. Moppet and Mittens talk to each other, while Tom seems more interested in a butterfly that has just flown away from the flowers surrounding the house.

The kittens play on the garden path, surrounded by tall flowers. Moppet is down on all fours, with her pinafore falling off her back. Mittens has lifted up the front of her pinafore to inspect it. Tom is trying to catch a large butterfly that is circling over his head.

Mittens and Moppet have climbed through a raised bed of pink rhododendrons and ferns, and arrived on the top of a dry stone wall. Mittens is tugging at the neck of her pinafore, which is nearly falling off.

Tom Kitten bursts through a dense patch of ferns and foxgloves. He’s got a smile on his face, his jacket is undone, and he’s missing buttons on his trousers.

Mittens and Moppet strip the broken clothes from a smiling Tom Kitten.

The three kittens look down from the top of the dry stone wall at the lane below, along which three large white ducks with yellow bills are walking in a line. Tom is trying to hold up his broken trousers with one paw.

The three ducks stand in the lane, in front of the white farm house and the hills behind.

The three ducks stare up at the kittens on top of the wall, who are leaning over and staring at the ducks. Rebeccah Puddle-duck is wearing a straw boater with a curved brim, edged with a blue ribbon. Jemima Puddle-duck has the collar of a pinafore on her head.

The kittens have climbed down from the wall and are looking at the ducks. In between them lies a pile of clothes, including the pinafores and Tom’s blue trousers.

Mr. Drake Puddle-duck grabs Tom’s blue trousers in his bill.

Mr. Drake Puddle-duck stands up to his full height. He is wearing Tom’s blue trousers, white collar, and has his blue jacket wrapped around him and pinned in place with his wings.

The three ducks waddle off down the lane, wearing the kittens’ clothes and looking happy with their finds. The lane runs between some stone farm buildings, through a wooden gate, and off up the hill. In the farmyard there is a group of chickens, who watch the ducks leaving.

The three kittens sit on top of the wall next to each other and stare at the ducks as they walk away. Behind them, unseen, Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit is looking down the garden path at the kittens.

Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit holds Tom Kitten by the scruff of his neck and raises her paw threateningly. The other kittens crouch at the hem of her dress.

Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit is chatting excitedly with another cat, who is wearing a black dress, a purple scarf and a purple bonnet covering her ears. Outside the doorway stand two more cats, who are also wearing scarves and bonnets. Pots of geraniums are standing on the windowsill.

The bedroom that the kittens have gone to is in a dreadful mess. Clothes and shoes litter the floor; Moppet is trying to climb up the red curtains surrounding the head of a wooden bed; Mittens has already made it to the top; and Tom Kitten is standing on the foot of the bed looking up at Mittens and wearing a large blue bonnet.

Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit has opened the door and is pointing a paw at Tom, who has climbed down from the bed. Behind the bed’s top curtains we can just see the other two kittens’ ears poking out. In front of the door a chair has tipped over, spilling the clothes that had been hung on it.

The three ducks slide into a cool pond covered with floating lily leaves and with irises around the edge. The hat and blue jacket have slid off the ducks, and are being held in their bills.

Two of the three ducks are dabbling in the water, with their tails high in the air. The other floats in front, looking down into the water. They’re surrounded by water lilies and other flowers.

A white duck with a yellow bill and wearing a red shawl and a blue bonnet walks down a autumnal forest lane, talking to a fox next to her. The fox is a head taller than the duck, and is wearing a grey jacket and knickerbockers, and a dark red waistcoat.

A lady in a blue dress and white pinafore stands in a farmhouse doorway with one hand on the door, and shakes a plate towards the ground. At her feet are three white ducks and a flock of chickens, chicks, and ducklings.

Jemima Puddle-duck stands in a barn in front of a wheelbarrow. A flock of chickens are looking at her, along with a couple of cows who peer through the wooden fence of their pen.

Jemima Puddle-duck stands on a garden path next to a rhubarb patch and looks up at the boy standing next to her. Behind them is a garden wall with a beehive in a nook, a wrought iron gate, and through the gate the boy’s mother.

Jemima Puddle-duck, wrapped up in her shawl and bonnet, looks up the hillside path. The path runs alongside a dry stone wall and some windswept trees.

Jemima Puddle-duck stands at the top of the hill looking around her.

Jemima Puddle-duck sprints down the hill with her bonnet pushed back off her head, her bill wide open and her wings spread wide wide.

Jemima Puddle-duck flies through the air above the trees. A look of sheer delight is on her face.

Jemima Puddle-duck stands next to a tall stand of pink foxgloves on a woodland path. Through the foxgloves we can see someone sitting and reading a newspaper. Their hands and feet are covered in reddish fur, and over the top of the newspaper we can see two furry pointy ears.

Jemima Puddle-duck talks to the fox, who is sitting on a tree-stump. He is wearing a grey jacket and knickerbockers, and a dark red waistcoat, and is clutching his newspaper with both paws.

Jemima Puddle-duck talks to the fox, who has stood up and is looking down at her. He looks sly, has his hands clasped behind his back, and his bushy red tail with a white tip is hanging down between his coattails.

Jemima Puddle-duck follows the fox towards a forest hut made of sticks. There’s a piece of cloth covering half the roof, and an upside-down bucket forms the top of the chimney. In front of the house are more pink foxgloves.

Jemima Puddle-duck has gone through the door of the woodshed and is inspecting the inside. Outside, the sly-looking fox has half closed the door with one paw, and is suppressing a snigger with the other.

Jemima Puddle-duck is comfortably nesting in massive pile of feathers, with her bill resting on her breast. Through a gap in the boards that make up the wall behind her we can see the fox’s eye and long snout as he spies on Jemima.

Jemima Puddle-duck pokes her head out of the woodshed to look at the fox, who is sitting outside on a fallen tree reading his newspaper.

The fox, now not wearing his jacket and knickerbockers, paws at Jemima Puddle-duck’s eggs in their nest in his woodshed.

Jemima Puddle-duck talks to the fox in front of a large white wooden gate.

Jemima Puddle-duck sits in a farm-garden and pecks at the plants around her. Behind her are trellises with apple-trees growing along them.

From the doorway of the kitchen Jemima Puddle-duck looks up at Kep, a brown collie with a white ruff and white feet. Kep is looking intently at two onions with long green stalks which are lying on the ground in front of Jemima.

Kep stands looking at a pub called the “Tower Bank Arms.” In front of the pub are a pair of foxhounds, a horse harnessed to a cart, two men in hats inspecting the cart, and a cat looking at them.

Jemima Puddle-duck trudges up a hill with a bag around her neck. Fronds of herbs are hanging out of the bag.

Jemima Puddle-duck talks with the fox in front of the woodshed. Behind them, slightly up the hill, we can see Kep and the two foxhounds.

Kep and the two foxhounds pad around the corner of the woodshed, behind the pink foxgloves.

The dogs chase with open mouths through the undergrowth after the fox, whose tail and back legs we can just see to the right.

Jemima Puddle-duck looks furious and is quacking at Kep, who has grabbed the woodshed door handle with his mouth and pulled it open. Inside the woodshed with wagging tails the foxhounds gobble down Jemima’s eggs.

Jemima Puddle-duck walks forlornly down the path towards the stone farmhouse, followed by Kep. The foxhounds are alert and walk on in front of them.

Jemima Puddle-duck stands in the farmyard with the farmhouse, three cows and a water butt in the distance behind her. At her feet at four little yellow ducklings.

Two cats sit on rocking chairs in a wood-panelled living room, in front of a large cast iron oven built into a fireplace in the wall. The room is decorated with red and blue rugs and red velvet curtains, and jugs line the mantelpiece above the fireplace. The cat on the left is wearing a purple dress with a blue shawl and a purple bonnet, and is holding a folded umbrella. The cat on the right is wearing a blue dress, and sneezing into a large white handkerchief. To the very right is a large wooden barrel, from behind which a kitten is peeking out.

A mother cat hauls a kitten by the scruff of its neck towards a small door in the wood panelling of a wall. On the other side in the dark another kitten peeks out.

Mrs. Tabitha, dressed in a striped blue dress and white pinafore, stands on the stair landing and looks down the stairs with her green eyes wide.

The two kittens emerge from the cupboard in the wall into the lit hallway.

One kitten stands on a step, while the other kitten sits and holds both front paws over a ball of dough.

Moppet’s tail and back paw stick out of the wooden barrel that she’s just dived into.

Mittens’ tail pokes out of a large jar that stands next to some large bowls on a windowsill.

Mrs. Ribby stands in the doorway to the house, having just rapped on the door with the handle of her black umbrella. She has ginger fur, large green-brown eyes, and is wearing a pink dress patterned with purple flowers, a black pinafore, a purple hat, and a thick blue shawl.

Mrs. Ribby looks around the room, clutching her umbrella in front of her.

Mrs. Tabitha has turned around on her chair and noticed the open cupboard door. Behind her, a kitten’s ears are poking out of the wooden barrel.

The cats inspect the contents of a large wooden chest by the light of a candle, searching for kittens.

The cats inspect the floorboards carefully.

Mrs. Ribby grips Moppet by the scruff of her neck and pulls her out of the barrel.

An old rat, wearing a blue dress, white pinafore and holding a white plate, scurries across the floor. The room is furnished with furniture in dark wood, bowls of flowers, and decorative plates.

Mrs. Tabitha has a paw around the shoulders of a scared-looking Moppet, who is hugging her back. Behind them, Mrs. Ribby inspects an opening in the wall.

Mittens is standing in front of a large overturned jar. She clutches her paws to her chest and looks worried.

A fat rat runs towards the stairs holding a plate with a slab of yellow butter. He is wearing yellow trousers and matching waistcoat, a green jacket, and brown leather shoes.

A contented-looking terrier strolls down the road. It’s wearing a stripy jumper and carrying a basket in its mouth.

Tom Kitten looks around the edge of a doorway.

Tom Kitten, wearing his blue jacket, perches on the end of the oven grate and stares up the chimney. A thin wisp of smoke is curling up from the back of the range.

Tom Kitten disappears up the chimney so that we can only see his tail.

Tom Kitten stands on a ledge in the chimney, and looks down at the smoke rising up from the range.

A chimney on which birds are sitting rises from the slate roof of a large house. In the distance, behind the gardens, a lane flanked with stone walls winds its way up the grassy hills.

Tom Kitten crawls up the slanting chimney in the dark.

Tom Kitten stares out from the darkness.

Tom Kitten stands in the chimney and looks at a couple of mutton ribs lying on the floor. His fur and blue jacket are covered with soot.

Tom Kitten disappears into a crack in the corner of the wall, with just with hind legs and tail showing.

A door stands open between two attic rooms.

Tom Kitten has fallen through a hole and landed on his back on a pile of rags. The fat rat is sitting to one side with his hands on his knees, and looks on in amazement.

Tom Kitten sits on the pile of rags and looks worried.

The fat rat has turned to his right, and is talking with the old rat who has appeared around the corner.

Anna Maria rushes over to Tom Kitten with her hands raised. Samuel Whiskers remains sitting on the floor and watches the scene while picking at a piece of food that he is holding.

Tom Kitten lies on the floor, trussed up with string so that he cannot move.

Anna Maria crouches down to talk to Samuel Whiskers.

At the top of the stairs, Samuel Whiskers rolls a wooden rolling-pin over an ornate red rug.

Samuel Whiskers peers out of a small hole next to several pots of geraniums standing on a windowsill.

Anna Maria leans over a large bowl of dough and pulls a bit off. In the background Moppet’s ears are poking out of the wooden barrel.

Tom Kitten lies on the boards with his mouth open, still completely tied up in string. Behind him is the pile of rags, and in front is a large black spider.

The rats lean over Tom Kitten and rub him with butter.

The rats lean over Tom Kitten and start to encase him in pastry.

The rats roll a rolling-pin up and down the hissing Tom Kitten, whose body is now fully encased in a tube of pastry.

The rats stare up at the floorboards above them, leaving the rolling-pin leaning on Tom Kitten.

Samuel Whiskers runs away, with his tail streaming out behind him.

A dog’s nose and paw poke in through a gap in the floorboards above Tom Kitten and the rolling-pin.

John Joiner sniffs around under the floorboards. Next to him is his tool bag, out of which is spilling a hammer, a saw, a screwdriver and a small pile of nails.

Mrs. Tabitha scrubs Tom Kitten clean of the dough in a bath of water while Moppet and Mittens look on. By the door to the house, Mrs. Ribby offers John Joiner a pudding before he leaves.

Anna Maria and Samuel Whiskers run down a lane between houses and stone walls. Anna Maria is pushing a wheelbarrow containing some parcels.

Samuel Whiskers stands in the wheelbarrow and steadies a parcel that is attached to a rope. From the top of a stack of hay bales Anna Maria pulls on the other end of the rope.

Mrs. Tabitha sits in her rocking-chair in front of the range with her paws in her lap. Her abandoned knitting lies at her feet.

Farmer Potatoes looks around his barn. He is wearing a grey hat, grey jacket, brown trousers and black leather boots.

Moppet sits on top of a stone wall and looks down at a couple of rats that are hiding under the ferns at the base. Another rat is running around in front of a couple of upturned flowerpots. In the background, Mittens walks along another wall with a rat in her mouth.

One of the kittens is nailing a set of rat tails to a wooden door while the other looks on.

Tom Kitten hisses and spits with all his fur standing on end at a shocked-looking rat that has popped out of a hole in the floorboards.

A mouse, with big whiskers and a long tail curving off to the right.

A man with a long white beard, wearing a brown suit with a brown flat cap and carrying a brown sack, walks down a garden path towards a red brick wall. Next to the path are flowerbeds and trees. Lettuces have been planted in the nearest bed, and from among them peek out a host of rabbits.

Six bunnies lie asleep on their backs in a circle around the only surviving lettuce plant in the bed.

Benjamin Bunny sits next to the entrance of the burrow in his red jacket and smokes a pipe. On the other side of the entrance sits Flopsy wearing a blue pinafore. A couple of the children are trying to play with her, while the rest run around and hide from each other.

Benjamin with a basket and Flopsy with a string bag walk along a grassy path next to a fence. The Flopsy Bunnies run at their feet. On the other side of the fence, Peter Rabbit is digging in his vegetable garden.

Benjamin pulls himself up on the fence to talk to Peter Rabbit, who gestures at his cabbage stalks that are missing their leaves. Behind him, his mother spreads her dress wide to conceal the cabbage leaves behind her, and a basket next to her is covering more cabbages.

The Flopsy Bunnies run across a field towards a stone wall, followed by Benjamin Bunny.

The Flopsy Bunnies cluster around a patch of yellowing lettuce and start munching.

The Flopsy Bunnies have laid down on the grass and gone to sleep, one with a paper bag on its head.

Thomasina Tittlemouse sniffs at a jam pot on which a black fly is sitting. Behind her lie a couple of sleeping bunnies on the grass.

Benjamin Bunnie wakes up and pulls the paper bag up to look out at Thomasina Tittlemouse, who is now standing on the jam pot.

Mr. McGregor sack is just visible as he empties grass mowings over the sleeping bunnies. The bunnies’ ears are poking out of the cut grass as Thomasina Tittlemouse dives into the jam pot.

Mr. McGregor in his black boots stands above the pile of grass mowings. The bunnies’ ears are still poking out.

Mr. McGregor carefully places the sleeping bunnies into his sack.

Mr. McGregor stands on a stone wall overlooking a grass meadow and ties up the sack.

Flopsy stands on her own on a wide grassy path and stares at a white farmhouse at the end.

Benjamin is wringing his paws, while Flopsy covers her face and cries. In front of them lies the sack, which Thomasina Tittlemouse is standing up against. Through a small hole at the bottom of the bag a pair of bunny ears are poking out.

The Flopsy Bunnies yawn and stretch, while Thomasina Tittlemouse tries to wake the last one asleep. Benjamin and Flopsy look through the contents of the sack; two turnips have already been pulled out.

The Flopsy Bunnies look out over a flowerbed from underneath a rhododendron bush.

The Flopsy Bunnies carefully follow Mr. McGregor as he walks under a rose trellis and down a path that runs between two flowerbeds.

Benjamin and Flopsy stand on the path, watching Mr. McGregor turn the corner at the end. Next to them sit four of the Flopsy Bunnies, and two more peek out from behind the low box hedges which edge the path.

The Flopsy Bunnies cluster around the flowerbeds filled with roses and the blue door of Mr. McGregor’s house.

The Flopsy Bunnies stand up and listen in through the open window, which is surrounded by ivy growing up the walls.

Two of the Flopsy Bunnies start to climb in through the open window. They’re slightly hidden behind a geranium with red flowers in a red flowerpot.

Several of the Flopsy Bunnies look in through the open window, past the geranium, to the figure of Mrs. McGregor in the room.

The youngest Flopsy Bunny, who is wearing a blue ribbon around their neck, is knocked from the brick windowsill by a flying vegetable, to the surprise of their two siblings below.

Benjamin and Flopsy hurry back through the garden. Flopsy is carrying the youngest Flopsy Bunny, and the rest run after her. A robin looks down from the top of the rose trellis.

Thomasina Tittlemouse wears a warm fur coat, with a red ribbon tied around her head.

Three kittens stare in through a paned window. On the inside are boxes and jars of sweets, and a set of scales.

Three mice gather together in front of some glass jars. Another mouse is standing on its own on top of the furthest jar.

A doll peers in through the paned window of a shop named “Ginger & Pickles” while another stands to one side with her handbag.

Inside the shop, a cat in a green dress and white pinafore and a dog in a brown jacket stand side by side behind the counter. Standing on a box in front of the counter and talking to the shop owners is a fat rat in a long green coat. A frog in a red jacket is sitting to his left, and four rabbits queue up to the right.

Ginger stares over the counter at the three mice leaving with their shopping.

Two mice stand outside the door, while the one inside points at three large boxes, labelled “Cream Crackers,” “Water Biscuits,” and “Oatmeal Wafers.”

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle the hedgehog stands in front of the counter and puts her shopping into her bag. Pickles notes down in his ledger what she’s bought.

A set of scales stand next to an upturned box with “Till” written inside it and a book with “Ledger” written on the spine.

Peter Rabbit walks through the door of Ginger & Pickles carrying a basket. To the left of the door is a big sack of nuts, from which two red squirrels are helping themselves. In front of the window, Jemima Puddle-duck and a chicken in a black hat and coat are talking. Many ducklings and chicks are running around at their feet.

Ginger and Pickles sit next to each other in the shop and eat, lit by a candle.

Ginger and Pickles look through the open door of their shop at a policeman walking past.

Two young girls in blue dresses each hold one arm of a policeman doll, and look down a lane at Pickles and the farmhouse beyond. The youngest girl is holding a teddy bear in her other hand.

One rat, Samuel Whiskers, stands on a box and angrily points, while another rat, Anna Maria, stands behind him.

Ginger sits at a table covered in a red tablecloth and writes on some paper, while Pickles watches on. In front of the table is a box with a pile of papers on top of it. Looking through the window are the girls with the policeman doll and the teddy bear.

The policeman leans against the counter and writes in his notebook.

The policeman holds his notebook and sucks on his pencil thoughtfully, while leaning against a wooden barrel. Behind the desk next to him are just visible a pair of white paws, black ears, and a white-tipped black tail.

Ginger and Pickles stare out of the doorway past a hedge and iron fence.

Ginger reads the letter with a paw to his mouth, while Pickles stands next to him looking nervous.

Pickles stands in the shop doorway while Ginger closes the window shutters.

Ginger, dressed in a long coat, leaves a trap at the entrance to a warren. On the ground behind him are a pile of traps and snares. Three bunnies are visible on the other side of the rise.

Pickles, dressed in a tan jacket and holding a rifle, carefully makes his way along a stone wall. Past the end, several bunnies can be seen in a field and at the bottom of a tree.

All the village residents gather in front of the closed-up shop and chatter to each other while holding their shopping baskets.

A horse stands hitched to a covered cart with large wheels and “T. Baker” written on the side. Around it stand the Puddle-ducks, Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit and the three kittens, and Duchess the dog.

A dormouse in a pink dress and white pinafore stands in a doorway underneath a sign that reads “J. Dormouse.” The house is roofed with oak leaves, and has clover growing in front and up the walls. Mr. John Dormouse watches out of the window, with his reading glasses on his forehead, while five other dormice carry a long white candle down the path.

Seven mice stand around a candle in a candlestick, which has drooped over so much that it is in danger of going out.

The mice show the bent candle ends to Miss Dormouse, who has her hands on her hips.

The mice have nominated one of them to complain to Mr. John Dormouse, who is tucked up in his four-poster bed with his glasses on.

Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-duck, Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, Squirrel Nutkin and other animals all gather around a board leant up against a stone wall that has “Sale” written on it.

Sally Henny Penny stands behind the counter of her somewhat cluttered show. The walls are lined with wooden drawers and cupboards, and the shop is full of barrels and biscuit tins. Samuel Whiskers is pulling a blue package from Sally Henny Penny’s claw, while Peter and Benjamin Bunny and Mrs. Tiggy-winkle wait in the queue.

Peter and Benjamin rummage through a barrel, the mice inspect some biscuits, Squirrel Nutkin opens one of the drawers, Jeremy Fisher walks around holding a parcel, and Mrs. Tiggy-winkle looks at a plate of eggs.

The mice are playing with the set of scales. Two stand on each plate, while the fifth is checking the balance. In front of the scales lie two gold coins.

Four bees with black, white and yellow stripes in an underground tunnel follow a mouse who is looking over her shoulder at them. The mouse is dressed in a blue dress with a red and white blouse, and is carrying a basket and a stick.

A mouse stands in the doorway to her house, which is surrounded by moss and succulent leaves. She is wearing a red and white striped blouse under a white pinafore, and is clasping her paws together.

In a tunnel underground, Mrs. Tittlemouse opens a wooden door set into the wall.

Mrs. Tittlemouse lies under a pink blanket in a bed built into a niche in the wall. The bed has blue curtains that can be pulled across. On the floor are her brown leather shoes and a red dustpan and brush, while her dress hangs from a hook on the wall.

A black beetle scurries aware from Mrs. Tittlemouse, who is holding her dustpan and brush.

Mrs. Tittlemouse, sweeping the entrance to her burrow, warily eyes up a red ladybird with black spots that is near the end of the tunnel.

Mrs. Tittlemouse peers out of the end of her burrow at a brown spider with long legs and a blue umbrella.

The spider clings to a thread of silk attached next to the window that Mrs. Tittlemouse has just thrown it out of.

Mrs. Tittlemouse creeps down a tunnel holding her covered basket.

Mrs. Tittlemouse brandishes her basket at a yellow, black and white striped bee, which looks worried.

Mrs. Tittlemouse peers around a corner of the tunnel at Babbitty Bumble as she walks away.

The bees peek out of the moss that fills the entire tunnel. Mrs. Tittlemouse starts pulling at the moss.

Mr. Jackson sits in front of a fire in a rocking chair, while Mrs. Tittlemouse approaches from behind, clasping her paws together.

Mr. Jackson is a large toad. He is wearing brown shoes, brown trousers, a grey waistcoat, and a long purple jacket.

Mr. Jackson sits at a table covered with a white tablecloth and blue and white plates and cups. Mrs. Tittlemouse leans over to offer him a cherrystone from a platter.

Mr. Jackson leans back in his chair and puffs at the thistledown floating around the room. On the table in front of him is a plate with several more.

Mrs. Tittlemouse wipes up wet footmarks with a green cloth, while in the background Mr. Jackson inspects the contents of a cupboard.

Mr. Jackson’s large body fills the tunnel he’s walking down, while Mrs. Tittlemouse follows closely behind.

Two woodlice crawl up a wall in between a plate rack and a vase of flowers, while another lies on its back on the countertop.

A red admiral butterfly sits on a bowl of sugar cubes. The bowl white with a pink rim, and is decorated with a floral pattern.

Mr. Jackson shies away from Babbity Bumble, nearly crushing Mrs. Tittlemouse behind him.

Mrs. Tittlemouse inspects her stock of hazelnuts.

Mrs. Tittlemouse wedges a stick into place across the top of her now considerably smaller front door.

Mrs. Tittlemouse sleeps in her rocking chair, with her paws in her lap.

Standing next to a counter top, Mrs. Tittlemouse carefully polishes each of her tin spoons in turn with a yellow cloth.

Several mice, wearing dresses of many different colours, dance while holding their tails up so that they don’t trip over them. In the background, another mouse wearing a burgundy jacket watches them. Through the window we can just see Mr. Jackson’s eye peering in.

Mrs. Tittlemouse passes around acorn-cups to the other mice, who drink from them. One mouse in a green jacket hands another acorn through the window to Mr. Jackson outside.

Two grey squirrels, one in a red jacket and one in a pink dress, hold orange bags and inspect the base of a tree.

The squirrel in the red coat climbs down a branch on all fours, with his fluffy tail held over his back. The other squirrel looks on from inside a nest on the top of the neighbouring tree.

Goody stands in the entrance to their nest, and pushes a piece of moss into the wall.

Timmy takes off his jacket and moves to hang it on a tree, while Goody looks at the ground, which is covered with low plants. In the clearing behind them several more grey squirrels can be seen.

Timmy investigates a hollow at the base of a tree, while Goody looks on from the crook of the branches above him.

Timmy stands on a thin branch and carefully places a nut in a hole in a tree. On the branch below Goody is ready to pass him another nut from her bag.

Squirrels who are searching and digging cover the forest floor.

Squirrels search all over a wide grassy meadow.

Timmy and Goody tie up two big sacks of nuts under the shade of a tree. In the background a couple of squirrels watch on, as a bird flies past.

Six squirrels chase Timmy across the floor of a forest of large leafy trees.

Timmy’s back legs and tail are sticking out of the hole in the tree that earlier he had been putting nuts in. On the branches around him sit the other grey squirrels.

Timmy has been squeezed through the hole, and is lying inside the tree on a large pile of nuts.

Goody stands on the top branch of a tree. She holds on to a leaf stalk with her left hand to steady herself, and uses her right hand to shade her eyes while looking for Timmy.

Timmy lies in a wooden bed, covered in moss, with just his head, paws and tail sticking out. Next to him, a chipmunk holds up a little lamp that’s lighting up the space.

Timmy lies in the moss bed wearing the white nightcap, wile the Chipmunk offers him a nut.

Goody walks on the forest floor, holding an empty sack and looking at the ground.

Goody, still holding the sack, talks to the Chipmunk, who is wearing a blue dress and a white apron.

Goody stands on the tree branch and points questioningly at the hole in the tree that Timmy had squeezed through. On the next branch down, the Chipmunk gestures with her arms held out wide.

Goody and the Chipmunk stand on the forest floor next to a large rock and discuss plans.

Goody stands on the branch and talks to Timmy, who has managed to squeeze his head through the hole in the tree.

Goody and Timmy walk down the trunk of the fallen-down tree, sheltering from the rain under a green umbrella. In the background, Chippy Hackee is standing in the trunk of the broken tree.

Chippy Hackee sits in his now open tree hole, with is nightcap on and a small pile of nuts at his feet. His wife looks over the top of the broken wall and pokes Chippy Hackee with a twig, while sheltering under an umbrella made from a leaf.

Chippy Hackee looks over the top of his broken-off tree trunk at a big brown bear who is walking among the trees in the distance.

The bear stands on its hind legs and peeks into the hole in the tree. The Chipmunks run down the broken tree trunk and away from the bear.

Chippy Hackee sits on a chair wrapped in a warm blanket with his feet in a bucket of hot water, and blows his nose into a white handkerchief. Next to him is a red jug and a tin of mustard. In the background, his wife is stirring something in a bowl.

Timmy stands by the door of their house built into a tree. One branch down, Goody holds a baby squirrel while swinging two more in a little hammock.

A little bird chirps at the Chipmunks, who brandish the now-broken umbrella at it.

A fox in a brown jacket, white cravat, and holding a cane, stands in a wood-panelled room that has a couple of paintings of hunting scenes on the wall.

Five rabbits peek over a stone wall at the fox in the field in the distance.

Mr. Tod sits under a willow on the far shore of a lake where several ducks are swimming.

Tommy Brock, a badger, digs at the base of a bank with his paws. A little further away a spade is lying against the bank.

Tommy Brock sits on a bank, and watches Mr. Tod slink past in the distance.

Tommy Brock leans on his spade at the bottom of a bank covered in saplings.

Mr. Bouncer stands outside the burrow, that is sheltering four little rabbit-babies.

Mr. Bouncer sits on the bank and chats with Tommy Brock. He’s wearing a striped blue shirt, and a tan apron. Tommy is wearing tan trousers, a red waistcoat and a blue jacket, and his spade and other gear lie beside him.

Mr. Bouncer and Tommy Brock sit in wicker chairs in the burrow, next to a pile of cabbages.

Benjamin Bunny looks out of the entrance of the burrow, while Flopsy reaches out to grab the ears of Mr. Bouncer who shies away.

In a woodland copse, Tommy Brock carries his spade and a bulging sack, while inspecting a snare that’s been set between a patch of bluebells and the path.

Benjamin Bunny stands among tall grass, looking at the house made of sticks, with a broken bucket for a chimney.

Peter Rabbit stands with his ears pricked up in a field between two stands of trees.

Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny talk together, next to a snare stuck in the ground.

Benjamin Bunny gestures to Peter Rabbit from the mossy top of a low stone wall, between the field and the woods. The mole trap is fastened into the ground between them.

Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny walk up a steep hill towards some trees.

Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny reach Cottontail and her children who are sitting near her feet.

Benjamin Bunny and Peter Rabbit squeeze down a thin track between some rocks.

A dark cave entrance is surrounded by trees and fallen rocks.

A dark kitchen, with a fireplace and wooden countertops. Pots and pans are hanging from the wall, and a jug in a bowl is on the table.

A wooden chair stands behind a table set with a plate, cutlery, cups and condiments.

Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny peer in through the low window set into the stone wall of the house.

The rabbits discuss what to do next, in the darkness next to the window.

In the dark kitchen, the light of the moon falls on the shut door of the large oven.

From inside the kitchen the rabbits can be seen at the window peering in.

The two rabbits dive into a hole between two rocks on a hillside.

Mr. Tod sits panting next to long grass and plants. In the distance the sun rises over the hills.

Mr. Tod walks up the open hillside towards the edge of the trees.

Mr. Tod strolls through the open forest, wearing a tan jacket and carrying a walking cane.

Mr. Tod enters his kitchen, looking worried.

Mr. Tod walks from his kitchen to the next room, clutching his paws in anger.

Mr. Tod pokes his head through his bedroom doorway and looks shocked and angry at what he says: Tommy Brock, asleep and snoring in his bed, without even having taken his shoes off.

Mr. Tod pays the clothes line out of the bedroom window.

Mr. Tod walks quickly down a forest path.

Tommy Brock lies in Mr. Tod’s bed underneath a warm blanket.

Mr. Tod next to his bed and attaches the clothes line to the ceiling, so that the end of it, with its attached hook, is hanging down directly over the sleeping Tommy Brock.

Mr. Tod walks towards the sleeping Tommy Brock, holding a bucket of water behind his back.

Tommy Brock lies in bed, looking up at the bucket of water hung over his head by a clothes line that reaches to the window.

Mr. Tod stands on a chair at the head of the bed, inspecting the bucket and the “sleeping” Tommy Brock.

Mr. Tod walks out of the front door, with his big fluffy tail behind him.

Tommy Brock sits up in bed and looks at clothes line heading out of the window.

Mr. Tod gnaws at the clothes line that has been tied to a tree outside.

Mr. Tod sits outside with the broken end of the line hanging from his mouth. The rest of the line trails into the house through the window.

Mr. Tod climbs up on to the window frame and peers in.

Mr. Tod walks off around a large rock.

Mr. Tod walks through his kitchen door and is immediately greeted by the grinning Tommy Brock, who is sitting at the set table holding a plate and a cup of tea.

Benjamin Bunny and Peter Rabbit stand on a past between two rocks.

The rabbits stand next to Mr. Tod’s window and gesture at each other.

Mr. Tod and Tommy Brock tussle with each other outside the house.

Mr. Tod and Tommy Brock snarl at each other from either side of a stone wall.

Tommy Brock, fighting with Mr. Tod, has got him on his back. The furniture in the house has been smashed, and a large kettle lies on the floor with its lid off. The rabbits are hiding around the corner of the hallway.

Mr. Bouncer is crouching to the side of his wicker chair, while Flopsy walks off with his pipe and tobacco.

Flopsy sweeps the floor and ignores Mr. Bouncer who is still crouching to the side of his wicker chair.

Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny run down a grassy slope, carrying a brown sack between them.

Mr. Bouncer has returned to his chair, Peter Rabbit is holding his pipe, and Benjamin Bunny and Flopsy are cuddling the baby rabbits.

The rabbits eat a meal at the dining table, while the baby rabbits sleep in a big circular bed next to them.

Two pigs talk to each other, while walking away from a crossroads and down a country lane, carrying red parcels. The pig on the left is wearing yellow shorts, a blue and white waistcoat, a blue tie and a red jacket. The pig on the right is wearing yellow shorts, a red and white waistcoat, a blue tie and a green jacket.

A flock of eight piglets follow an pig wearing a dress and bonnet who’s carrying a couple of buckets towards a slop trough. In the background a long wall stands in front of trees and a house.

Stumpy, the piglet with a very small tail, runs past four hens.

Alexander the piglet has wedged himself into the food trough and is squealing at his siblings.

A piglet lies in a basket on some clothes, next to a large bucket.

Yock-yock floats on her back in a large wooden washtub.

Three piglets munch away at the plants in a vegetable garden.

Aunt Pettitoes stands through a field carrying two large buckets. She is wearing a blue and white striped dress, a blue-grey apron, and a blue and white cap. At her feet the eight piglets busily eat from the slop trough.

Two piglets are being pulled in a wheelbarrow by a farm worker, following the rest in a farm cart through the farm gates. A pair of cows, and a small flock of chickens look on.

Aunt Pettitoes fastens a cravat around the neck of Pigling Bland, who is dressed in yellow knickerbockers and a red jacket and is looking proud. Behind him stands Alexander in a green jacket, and in front, Spot, who is wearing a purple dress, blows her nose on a white handkerchief. Three geese, two chickens and a border collie watch on.

Pigling Bland shakes the foot of a chicken standing on an upturned pan.

The narrator pulls open Pigling Bland’s jacket with one hand while holding a piece of paper with the other.

Alexander prances around the farmyard followed by chickens, while Aunt Pettitoes lectures a serious-looking Pigling Bland.

Alexander and Pigling Bland walk away from Aunt Pettitoes and the narrator while waving goodbye.

Alexander and Pigling Bland sit on the edge of a field next to a wooded hill, and eat the sandwiches prepared for them from a red and white picnic cloth.

A policemen blocks the tree-lined path and checks the piglet’s papers.

A dejected Pigling Bland watches as the policemen leads Alexander away down the hill.

Alexander follows the policeman up the garden path, past the cabbages, towards the farmhouse.

Pigling Bland walks past a signpost down a road towards a wide gate.

Pigling Bland runs along a hillside road holding out a piece of paper.

Pigling Bland stands on a small grassy path in an open forest.

Pigling Bland walks sadly towards a shed under the light of a full moon.

A hand holding a lamp is thrust into the hen house, lighting up a host of sleepy-looking grey, yellow, white, and brown hens, and, underneath a shelf, the crouching form of Pigling Bland.

An old man holds a large hamper that is resting on the floor. Pigling Bland watches on while standing next to a kettle on a stove.

Mr. Piperson has taken his shoes off, and thrown one across the room at the wall.

Pigling Bland sits on one side of the room on a stool, while Mr. Piperson stands working on the other side.

Pigling Bland sits on a stool in front of the warm fire eating porridge from a blue bowl.

Pigling Bland stands by the side of the farmhouse. A cart with a basket on the back is just visible around the corner.

Pigling Bland looks out of the open kitchen doorway, while wiping a plate with a white tea towel.

Pigling Bland peers through the doorway. On the wall are a pair of shelves, and to the other side a side table with a basket.

Pigling Bland walks up to a closed door and listens attentively.

While Pigling Bland eats his bowl of porridge in front of the fire, another piglet peeks in the door behind him.

Pig-wig, a black pig in a blue dress, stands next to Pigling Bland and gestures at his bowl.

Pigling Bland ladles some porridge into a bowl from a cooking pot standing on a three-legged stool.

Pig-wig sits on a tall wooden chair, next to a cabinet on which is standing a vase of blue flowers.

Both the pigs sit on their own three-legged stools in front of the fire and talk to each other.

Pig-wig sits on the floor, resting one arm on the three-legged stool, and closes her eyes.

Pigling Bland has moved closer to the fire and warms his trotters, while Pig-wig lies sleeping on the hearthrug wrapped up in an antimacassar.

Pigling Black and Pig-wig walk hand in hand out of the front door of Mr. Piperson’s house.

Pigling Bland and Pig-wig walk away from the farmhouse in the pre-dawn light.

As the sun rises from behind the hill, Pig-wig takes Pigling Bland’s arm and points out town in the bottom of the valley.

Pig-wig holds the hem of her dress up with one hand, as she skips and dances at the top of the path that leads down into the valley. Pigling Bland has sat himself on a rock on the side of the path and watches her.

Pig-wig and Pigling Bland peek around the edge of a bush at two horses pulling a plough.

Pig-wig and Pigling Bland have stopped in the road as a horse and cart approaches. The driver is reading a newspaper.

Pig-wig and Pigling Bland, with walking stick, walk arm-in-arm down the road trying to look as elderly as possible.

Pig-wig and Pigling Bland stare up at the cart, next to a big wheel and the end of a trailing whip.

Pigling Bland and Pig-wig stand by the side of the cart as the grocer, dressed in a white coat and straw hat, inspects their papers. The cart horse has leaned around to look at them.

Pigling Bland holds up his papers while standing by the horse’s legs. Pig-wig watches on, looking worried.

Pigling Bland and Pig-wig stand hand in hand, watching the cart drive away up the hill.

Pigling Bland and Pig-wig sprint down the path on the grassy hill.

Pigling Bland and Pig-wig run across a stone bridge crossing a rocky river.

Pig-wig and Pigling Bland dance a jig in front of a crossroads and three watching rabbits.

A brown mouse who is not wearing anything stands on a table and pours a glass of water for another brown mouse from a blue and white jug. The other mouse is wearing tan trousers, a white shirt, and a light blue jacket with ruffed wrists.

A mouse sits in a flowerbed next to a path, and watches a large wicker hamper that sits just inside a wrought iron gate set between two stone walls.

Timmy Willie lies sleeping in a mostly empty pea pod.

A brown cart horse with a white nose has been hitched to a covered two-wheel cart and stands in a country lane between stone walls. Three white ducks walk past in front.

The cart has pulled in to a courtyard, and the driver is handing over a hamper to a lady wearing a pink dress and white pinafore. Two small brown dogs play behind the cart.

The lady kneels downs to open the hamper and inspect the contents.

Timmy Willie sprints towards a small hole in the skirting board with his tail flying out behind him.

Timmy Willie crouches on a table set with a clean white tablecloth, cutlery, plates and glasses. The mice around the table, all of whom are dressed in expensive looking jackets and shirts, have stood up and look shocked.

The mice have taken their places at the table again, and Timmy Willie has been found his own place.

Timmy Willie stands up in his chair looking worried and insignificant. Another mouse hands him a plate of food.

Two mice sprint across the hallway flagstones carrying plates of food. A cat stares at them through the doorway to the hall.

The cat stands on its hind legs and checks behind a yellow cushion on a red sofa. The room is decorated with a blue rug and a pale curtain with a flower pattern and red trim.

A group of mice in jackets walk towards the bottom of the red-carpeted stairs.

Timmy Willie sits in his nest sorting wheat from chaff with a sieve. Next to him are a couple of full sacks, a jug, and a basket. Through the entrance to the burrow a robin stares in.

Timmy Willie stands in a flowerbed and shelters under a large leaf that he’s holding like an umbrella.

In the coal cellar Johnny Town-mouse gestures to Timmy Willie, who has his head in his hands.

The lady lifts the hamper into the back of the carriage while the cat looks on.

Timmy Willie waves out of the hamper he’s just climbed into at the four mice leaning over the edge and looking at him.

Timmy Willie touches the corner of the wicker hamper.

Timmy Willie sits at the entrance to his burrow looking out over the fields and rolling hills. Next to him a small picnic basket has been unpacked.

Timmy Willie and Johnny Town-mouse sit on little red stools in his burrow, holding knives and forks. In between them is a table made of a piece of branch, on which is a white plate with a herb pudding.

Timmy Willie holds a blue jug with a white stripe, and watches the highland cattle in the next field.

Johnny Town-mouse runs out of a house carrying a suitcase and his hat. In the kitchen a maid has emptied out a cupboard, and four kittens play with each other around the table.

Timmy Willie walks down a little path between tufts of grass with a sack slung over his shoulder. In the background, in front of some large trees, a man is mowing the lawn.

Timmy Willie and Johnny Town-mouse site next to each other and feast on ears of corn.

Timmy Willie holds a daisy and waves it at the departing cart.

Timmy Willie finishes eating a strawberry while holding a strawberry leaf and sitting next to another strawberry that is nearly as big as he is.