"Dear me!" said Dorothy to herself, "how very intelligent she is! I _must_ have a look at her"; and, pushing the leaves gently aside, she cautiously peeped out. [Illustration: "PUSHING THE LEAVES GENTLY ASIDE, SHE CAUTIOUSLY PEEPED OUT."] It was a charming little dell, carpeted with fine moss, and with strange-looking wild flowers and tall nodding grasses growing about the sides of it; but, to Dorothy's astonishment, the fairy proved to be an extremely small field-mouse, sitting up like a little pug-dog and gazing attentively at the thicket: "and _I_ think"--the Mouse went on, as if it were tired of waiting for an answer to its last remark--"_I_ think a child should be six inches tall, _at least_." This was so ridiculous that Dorothy had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming with laughter. "Why," she exclaimed, "I used to be"--and here she had to stop and count up on her fingers as if she were doing a sum--"I used to be eight times as big as _that_, myself." "Tut, tut!--" said the Mouse, and the "tuts" sounded like beads dropping into a pill-box--"tut, tut! Don't tell me such rubbish!" "Oh, you needn't _tut_ me," said Dorothy. "It's the exact truth." "Then I don't understand it," said the Mouse, shaking its head in a puzzled way. "_I_ always thought children grew the other way." "Well, you see,--" said Dorothy, in her old-fashioned way,--"you see, I've been very much reduced." (She thought afterward that this sounded rather as if she had lost all her property, but it was the only thing she could think of to say at the time.) "I _don't_ see it at all," said the Mouse, fretfully, "and what's more, I don't see _you_, in fact, I don't think you ought to be hiding in the bushes and chattering at me in this way." This seemed to Dorothy to be a very personal remark, and she answered, rather indignantly, "And why not, I should like to know?" "Because,"--said the Mouse in a very superior manner,--"because little children should be seen and not heard." "Hoity-toity!" said Dorothy, very sharply. (I don't think she had the slightest idea of what this meant, but she had read somewhere in a book that it was an expression used when other persons gave themselves airs, and she thought she would try the effect of it on the Mouse.) But, to her great disappointment, the Mouse made no reply of any kind, and after picking a leaf and holding it up to its eyes for a moment, as if it were having a cry in its small way, the poor little creature turned about and ran into the thicket at the further side of the dell. [Illustration: THE MOUSE LAMENTS.]