eyes, to see the faces of the Forest-mulgars
peeping in at the window, envying the Mullas their warmth, though afraid
of their fire, and calling softly one to another: "Ho, ho! look at the
Mulla-sluggas [lazy princes] sitting round their fire!" And Thumb and
Thimble would grin and softly scratch their hairy knees. Thumb, indeed,
made up a Mulgar drone, which he used to buzz to himself when the
Munza-mulgars came miching and mocking and peeping. (But it was a bad
and dull drone, and I will not make it worse by turning it into my poor
English from Mulgar-royal.)

Nod often sat watching the Forest-mulgars frisking in the forest, though
every morning the light shone through on many perched frozen in the
boughs. The Mullabruks and Manquabees made huddles in the snow. But the
tiny Squirrel-tails, with their dark, grave, beautiful eyes and silken
amber coats, still roosted high where the frost-wind stirred in the
dark. Sometimes on a crusted branch of snow Nod would see
five--seven--nine of these tiny, frost-powdered Mulgars cuddling
together in a row, poor little frozen and empty boxes, their gay lives
fled away. And when his brothers were gathering sticks in the forest, he
would smuggle out for them two or three handfuls of nuts and pieces of
cake and Sudd-bread. All the crusts and husks and morsels he kept in a
shallow grass-basket, which his mother had plaited, to feed these
pillowy Squirrel-tails, the lean Skeetoes, and the spindle-legged
flycatchers.

Birds of all colours and many other odd little beasts came in the snow
to Nod to be fed. He summoned them with the clapping of two sticks of
ivory together, till his brothers began to wonder how it was their
victuals were dwindling so fast. But once, when Thumb and Thimble were
away in the forest with their jumping-poles, and he had ventured out on
this errand with his basket full of scraps, he forgot to put up the door
behind him. When he returned, skipping as fast as his fours would carry
him, wild pigs and long-snouted Brackanolls, Weddervols, and hungry
birds had come in and eaten more than half their store. The last of
their mother's treasured cheese was gone, and all their Ummuz-cane. That
night Thumb and Thimble went very sulky to bed. And for the next few
days all three brothers sallied out together, with their poles,
searching and grubbing after every scrap of victuals they could find
with which to fill their larder again.

Some time after this, so hard and shar