Page:Hans Andersen's fairy tales (Robinson).djvu/80

 HANS ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES whole shovelful of snow were thrown upon us, for we are giants in comparison with a little creature only an inch long. She wrapped herself up in a withered leaf, but it gave her no warmth; she shuddered with cold.

Close outside the wood, on the skirt of which Tommelise had been living, lay a large corn-field, but the corn had been carried away long ago, leaving only the dry, naked stubble standing up from the hard-frozen earth. It was like another wood to Tommelise, and oh, how she shivered with cold as she made her way through. At last she came past the field-mouse's door; for the field-mouse had made herself a little hole under the stubble, and there she dwelt snugly and comfortably, having a room full of corn, and a neat kitchen and store-chamber besides. And poor Tommelise must now play the beggar-girl; she stood at the door and begged for a little piece of a barley-corn, for she had had nothing to eat during two whole days.

'Thou poor little thing!' said the field-mouse, who was indeed a thoroughly good-natured old creature, 'come into my warm room and dine with me.'

And as she soon took a great liking to Tommelise, she proposed to her to stay. 'You may dwell with me all the winter if you will, but keep my room clean and neat, and tell me stories, for I love stories dearly.'

And Tommelise did all that the kind old field-mouse required of her, and was made very comfortable in her new abode.

'We shall have a visitor presently,' observed the field-mouse; 'my next-door neighbour comes to see me once every week. He is better off than I am, has large rooms in his house, and wears a coat of such beautiful black velvet. It would be a capital thing for you if you could secure him for your husband, 58