Page:Poor Cecco - 1925.djvu/100

88 When he had got it all together and carried it into the cave, it made such a pile that the cave itself seemed to look smaller, and Poor Cecco decided he might as well make a good job while he was about it, and hollow out the end a little more so as to have plenty of room to sleep in.

While he was scooping busily away with his paws, singing to himself and thinking how nice it would all be when it was finished, all at once he felt a torrent of loose earth raining down on his head; the wall of the cave on which he was working gave way at the same instant, and he fell headlong through.

When he picked himself up, covered with dust and dirt, Poor Cecco found to his surprise that he was in a large and comfortable kitchen. A fat elderly woodchuck, with bushy white whiskers, sat smoking in a corner; his wife, with an apron tied round her enormous waist, was preparing supper at the table, and from a bed in the corner three small woodchucks, equally fat, poked their heads out, each with a white nightcap on, to see what had happened. All five stared at Poor Cecco in astonishment and some indignation, for it is certainly not usual for a total stranger to drop in on one suddenly through the kitchen ceiling at supper time, especially when he brings half the ceiling with him, as Poor Cecco had unfortunately done.

The old woodchuck took his pipe from his mouth and stared from the hole in the ceiling to Poor Cecco, and back