Tommy Smith's Animals (Yesterday's Classics) by Selous Edmund

Author:Selous, Edmund [Selous, Edmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nature
ISBN: 9781599153766
Publisher: Yesterday's Classics
Published: 2010-11-12T13:51:43.217000+00:00

CHAPTER VIII

The Mole

"If we're only contented, some cause we shall find

To be thankful: the mole thought it nice to be blind."

THE next walk that Tommy Smith took was over some fields where there were a great many mole-hills. Of course, Tommy Smith had often seen mole-hills before, but I am not sure if he had ever seen a mole; for a mole, as you know, lives underneath the ground, and does not often come up to the top of it. So, when he saw a little black thing scrambling about in the grass, he cried out, "Oh! whatever is that?" and ran to it and picked it up.

"You won't hurt me, I know," said the mole (for it was one)—"and I don't mind your looking at me." You see Tommy Smith was getting a much better boy to animals, now that they had told him something about themselves, and the animals were beginning to find this out, and were not so frightened of him as they used to be.

Tommy Smith looked at the mole, and stroked it as it lay in his hand, and then he said, "Why, what a funny little black thing you are."

"Little!" said the mole; "I don't know what you mean by that. I am much bigger than the mouse or the shrew-mouse. You don't expect me to be as big as the rat, do you?"

"I don't know," said Tommy Smith; "but, you know, the rat is not so very big."

"He is as big as he requires to be, I suppose," said the mole, "and so am I. I have never felt too small in all my life, and I wonder that you should think me so. Why, look at those great hills of earth which I have flung up all over the fields. I am big enough to have made those, anyhow, and strong enough too. And look, how large and high they are."

"But are they so very high?" said Tommy Smith. "Why, I step over them quite easily."

"Dear me, that seems very wonderful," said the mole. "But I advise you not to do it often, for it must be a great exertion, and you might hurt yourself. But you must not think that because you are very big, I am very small. That would be very conceited."

Tommy Smith saw that he had not said the right thing, so he tried to think of something to say that the mole would like better. "Oh," he said at last, "what a very pretty, soft coat you have! I like it very much indeed."

"Yes; feel it," said the mole. "It is a very handsome fur; and I can tell you something about it which is curious."

"What is that?" said Tommy Smith.

"Why, you may stroke it whichever way you like," answered the mole, "without hurting me. It is not every animal that has a coat like that. There is the cat, poor thing! If you stroke her fur one way, she is very pleased and begins to purr; but if you stroke it the other way, it hurts her, and she does not like it at all.

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