country with me," cried Bright-eyes, springing
with a few light bounds to my side. "We're going to my birth-place, near
the sea-side. We will feast amongst the young corn there; and when the
pea-blossom has faded, and the ripe pods hang temptingly down, we'll
climb up the stalks and shell them, and banquet on the sweet green
seeds! We'll revel in the strawberry beds, and try which peach is the
ripest! Oh! merry lives lead the rats in a kitchen-garden, beneath the
bright sun of summer!"

"I've half a mind to go with you myself," said I, charmed with the rural
description. But I remembered my engagement with Whiskerandos, and
repressed the rising longing to feast upon English fruits, whose names
sounded so tempting.

"Then farewell, Oddity," cried I; "I fear I shall never meet you again."

"I'll come back to the old shed in winter," said he.

"But I-- ah! where shall I be then? How do I know, once crossing the
sea, whether I shall ever be able to return?" I had not the faintest
idea where Russia might be, or what sort of a place I should find it;
whether its rats are black, brown, or white, fierce as the Hamster, or
gentle as Zibethicus. A feeling of misgiving came suddenly over me; one
fear above all others depressed my heart, and unconsciously I uttered it
aloud: "I wonder whether in Russia rats find plenty to eat!"

The snub face of Oddity grew very grave at a question which he could not
answer, and whose importance he felt. But light-hearted Bright-eyes
quickly relieved our apprehensions.

"If we are to judge of what is in Russia by what comes from it," he
cried, "I should say that you have little to fear. I examined the cargo
of a Russian ship once, and never did I see a finer collection of
everything that could charm a rat. I say nothing of the furs,-- skins of
all kinds of creatures, sables, black and white foxes, ermines, lynxes,
hyaenas, bears, panthers, wolves, martens, white hares--"

"Stop, stop!" I exclaimed, "we do not want any furs beyond those with
which nature has adorned us."

"There was copper, iron, talc, (a mineral resembling glass--)"

"We don't care about them; no rat ever lived upon minerals."

"Linen, flax, hemp, feathers--"

"If there is nothing more nutritious to be had in Russia, why I'd rather
stay at home," cried I, with a little vexation.

"What do you say, then, to oil, both linseed and train-oil? to delicious
honey, corn without end, soap, isinglass, and, to crown the whole,