Part 3

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Better, after all, to have never finished the journey, and, yet, why should he complain? He had lived longer than most, and had had his supreme moments.

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"'The mouse behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd.'"

He had been dozing behind the wainscot in the dining-room, and the squeak of irritation had been due to a passing spider. The apt quotation reached him through the panel.

"Squeaked, surely?" The correction came in a soft, woman's voice.

"No, shrieked; I am certain of it."

"Squeaked, I think; a mouse doesn't shriek."

"Ah, but this mouse had a poetic licence."

"Look it up."

"I will."

The book was taken from within two inches of where he sat.

"'Shrieked' it is."

It amused him vastly, for he had never shrieked in his life.

"Do you like mice?" It was the first voice speaking again.

"Hate them--smelly little things."

"Do you remember that thing of Suckling's?--

"'Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice, ran in and out, As if they feared the light.'

"Pretty, rather, I think."

"What's pretty?"

"Oh, I don't know--your feet, I suppose."

He felt disappointed. Surely it was the feet that profited by the comparison. Still, he knew that the whole conversation would amuse his wife, and rushed off to tell her before he should forget it.

He had been rather anxious about her of late. Only the previous evening he had peeped from behind the bookcase and seen her backed into a corner, and defying six feet of solid humanity with brandished paws. Behaviour of this kind was courageous, but unmouselike, and would assuredly get her into difficulties.

He found her in the midst of tiny wisps of paper, thread, and wool, that had been her chief concern for three days past.

"Did you ever shriek?" he cried.

"No," she replied; "but I shall do if you can't be less clumsy."

He looked at her in amazement. Then the truth burst upon him. He was the father of seven, and was awkwardly seated upon three of them.

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