tailieunhanh - The Manger Mouse

Frantically he began to wash himself, little paws sweeping down over his head, feet wildly scratching to free the sticky tufts of fur, tongue and teeth working on the matted white of his belly, all to no avail, but he must--he must! So he didn't hear at first the humans coming in the door, and the slow step of a tired donkey. It was the sudden brightening that stopped his frantic efforts, and he froze in his alarm, huddling against the wall | The Manger Mouse A Christmas Story Jane Tyson Clement HE HUDDLED IN THE COLD outside the kitchen door. The black night was pierced with stars but he couldn t see them. He could only feel the thin chill of the night wind and loneliness loneliness and not knowing where to go what to do for he could hardly see. He was so small his eyes were scarcely open. His soft gray coat was rumpled and he trembled. He had no mother no brothers and sisters the cat had got them all finding the nest in a heap of rags behind a water jug but he had squeezed into a crack in the wall and the cat had missed him. He still felt a terror a desolation a sort of numb blindness. But that was long ago--or so it seemed to him--and he had been hiding scuttling from place to place so hungry he was weak with it and the noises all about him the comings and goings made him tremble--camel bells shouts loud human voices the bleating of goats the barking of dogs rude comments from the donkeys in the yard. He had known nothing of all this. He had never been out of the nest where his mother had cared for all her young with painstaking concern cleaning them and cleaning them teaching them to wash themselves watching for every intruder warning them of dangers of the cat. And the owl at night she said if you stray from the wall. Stay stay stay by the walls never never never in the open lest you be seen. And keep clean keep clean so you will give no scent. And she had licked them and taught them to wash their whiskers with their paws and behind their ears and all over even their little long tails. But that was long ago was over and he was lost and alone. There were heavy steps inside approaching the door and in an instinctive frenzy he moved scuttling along the wall and ducking into the nearest opening the entrance to the cooling room with a cistern and jugs of milk set in it to chill. A low pan of milk was left to sour on a bench just inside. He ran to the bench up the leg following his nose--and put his .