I want to see you do six lengths of the attic floor and back again. Touch the wall at each end before you turn. Old Mrs. Budge, lying awake in bed in the room below, heard the patter of tiny feet above her head and smiled. Dear little pretties, she said to herself. I sometimes wish we didn't keep cats.
Mice are nice, mice are.
I like to see them about the place with their bright eyes and their big ears and their little whiskers twitching. And she lay very still so as not to wake her husband while the noise above was going on. In the kitchen Wallace had been joined by Bertha, who came in through the cat door with a dark, hairy Cellarmouse, still alive, in her mouth. She laid it down on the floor and put a paw on it. They seem to think all the mice from the cellar belong to them.