"At first he was very polite to them only, because he was a civil servant of his Government; but after a bit they became so friendly that he loved them even better than himself, and went to tea with the rabbit in its hole, and climbed the tree to share a nut-breakfast with the squirrel, and--and--" "He doesn't know what to do with the mouse," a loud whisper, meant to be inaudible, broke in upon the fatal hesitation. "And went out for walks with the mouse when the ground was damp and the mouse complained of chilly feet. In the pocket of his coat, all snug and warm, it stood on its hind legs and peered out upon the world with its pointed nose just above the pocket flap--" "Then he liked the mouse best?" "What sort of coat was it? An overcoat or just an ordinary one that smelt? Was that the only pocket in it?" "It was made of the best leaves from the squirrel's tree, and from the rabbit's last year's fur, and the mouse had fastened the edges together neatly with the sharpest of its own discarded whiskers. And so they walked about the tiny island and enjoyed the view together--" "The mouse couldn't have seen much!" "Until, one day, the mouse declared the ground was ALWAYS wet and was getting wetter and wetter. And the man got frightened." "Ugh! It's going to get awful in a minute!" And the children nestled closer. The voice sank lower. It became mysterious. "And the wetter it got the more the man got frightened; for the island was dreadfully tiny and--" "Why, please, did it get wetter and wetter?" "THAT," continued the man who earned his living in His Majesty's Stationery Office by day, and by night justified his existence offering the raw material of epics unto little children, "that was the extraordinary part of it. For no one could discover. The man stroked his beard and looked about him, the squirrel shook its bushy tail, the rabbit lifted its upper lip and thrust its teeth out, and the mouse jerked its head from side to side until its whiskers grew longer and sharper than ever--but none of them could discover why the island got wetter and wetter and wetter--" "Perhaps it just rained like here." "For the sky was always blue, it never rained, and there was so little dew at night that no one even mentioned it. Yet the tiny island got wetter every day, till it finally got so wet that the very floor of the man's hut turned spongy and splashed every time the man went to look out of the window at the view. And at last he got so frightened that he stayed indoors altogether, put on both his coats at once, and told stories to the mouse and squirrel about a country that was always dry--" "Didn't the rabbit know anything?" "For all this time the rabbit was too terrified to come out of its hole at all. The increasing size of its front teeth added to its uneasiness, for they thrust out so far that they hid the view and made the island seem even smaller than it was--" "I like rabbits, though." "Till one fine day--"