Little Tiny or Thumbelina Page #2

								

trouble himself at all about the matter. He seated himself by her side
on a large green leaf, gave her some honey from the flowers to eat,
and told her she was very pretty, though not in the least like a
cockchafer. After a time, all the cockchafers turned up their feelers,
and said, "She has only two legs! how ugly that looks." "She has no
feelers," said another. "Her waist is quite slim. Pooh! she is like
a human being."

"Oh! she is ugly," said all the lady cockchafers, although Tiny
was very pretty. Then the cockchafer who had run away with her,
believed all the others when they said she was ugly, and would have
nothing more to say to her, and told her she might go where she liked.
Then he flew down with her from the tree, and placed her on a daisy,
and she wept at the thought that she was so ugly that even the
cockchafers would have nothing to say to her. And all the while she
was really the loveliest creature that one could imagine, and as
tender and delicate as a beautiful rose-leaf. During the whole
summer poor little Tiny lived quite alone in the wide forest. She wove
herself a bed with blades of grass, and hung it up under a broad leaf,
to protect herself from the rain. She sucked the honey from the
flowers for food, and drank the dew from their leaves every morning.
So passed away the summer and the autumn, and then came the winter,--the
long, cold winter. All the birds who had sung to her so sweetly
were flown away, and the trees and the flowers had withered. The large
clover leaf under the shelter of which she had lived, was now rolled
together and shrivelled up, nothing remained but a yellow withered
stalk. She felt dreadfully cold, for her clothes were torn, and she
was herself so frail and delicate, that poor little Tiny was nearly
frozen to death. It began to snow too; and the snow-flakes, as they
fell upon her, were like a whole shovelful falling upon one of us, for
we are tall, but she was only an inch high. Then she wrapped herself
up in a dry leaf, but it cracked in the middle and could not keep
her warm, and she shivered with cold. Near the wood in which she had
been living lay a corn-field, but the corn had been cut a long time;
nothing remained but the bare dry stubble standing up out of the
frozen ground. It was to her like struggling through a large wood. Oh!
how she shivered with the cold. She came at last to the door of a
field-mouse, who had a little den under the corn-stubble. There
dwelt the field-mouse in warmth and comfort, with a whole roomful of
corn, a kitchen, and a beautiful dining room. Poor little Tiny stood
before the door just like a little beggar-girl, and begged for a small
piece of barley-corn, for she had been without a morsel to eat for two
days.

"You poor little creature," said the field-mouse, who was really a
good old field-mouse, "come into my warm room and dine with me." She
was very pleased with Tiny, so she said, "You are quite welcome to
stay with me all the winter, if you like; but you must keep my rooms
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