have done the same?"

"Certainly," said the wood-mouse. "One must never offend people by
declining a kind offer. And when it happens to be a cousin ... and the
goods are hers...."

"Well, they weren't exactly," said the house-mouse. "The case really
belonged to the forester."

"According to that, nothing is ours," said the wood-mouse. "I work it
out differently. I say that the mast and nuts out here are mine. And the
larder in the forester's house is yours. And, in the same way, the case
in which the rat arrived was hers. But go on and tell me how things
went."

"Things went very badly," said the house-mouse. "For four days, we lived
on the fat of the land. But, on the fifth, the young mistress and the
man started unpacking."

"Oh!" said the wood-mouse. "Then the fun was over, I expect?"

"It was, cousin," said the house-mouse. "But that would have been all.
Nothing lasts for ever in this world: not even a chest of groceries from
Copenhagen, though it was the biggest I ever saw and simply bursting
with good things. But, when they discovered that some one had been at
it, they were angry; and we all got blamed for it, you see."

"And it was the rat who did it," said the wood-mouse. "That was really
hard on you."

"So it was," said the house-mouse. "They would not believe it was the
rats, because they had killed so many of them after the rats had bitten
Jens' nose. And so it must be the mice: that went without saying. To
judge by what I have heard them talk about since, the young mistress
stood up for me as long as she could, but the forester and his man both
said that, with mice and rats, it was six of one and half-a-dozen of the
other."

"Yes, that's the worst of it," said the wood-mouse. "It's just as with
me and the field-mouse. We have to suffer for our relations' misdeeds.
Well ... and didn't your mistress find out how things stood?"

"She did not," said the wood-mouse. "Taken all round, things went about
as badly as they could with me. You see, I had heard them say that the
case was to be unpacked. And then there was some nice cinnamon, which I
am so fond of. So, on the last night, I resolved to drag a piece over to
my place, so as to have a bit to spare. I did so and managed to get it
through the drain all right. But then it was so big that I had a
difficulty in dragging it any farther. So I nibbled it into two pieces.
One of these I got right down into my hole and the other just up to the
hole. But th