In a little hedgehog village, there stood at the end of a winding path the prettiest little home you ever saw. It was very small, but there was such a cozy, comfortable look about it that all the hedgehogs said: “It is the very house for a hedgehog to live in.”
Now Hedgehogs are very sensible people, and when winter comes they always go to sleep for weeks together, until the warm spring weather wakes them up. Now Tilly the Hedgehog had made up her mind to go to sleep for the winter, that is to say, if she could manage to make room for her little friends, who would very likely come to her house to sleep, since it was so warm and comfortable.
When the winter evenings came round, all the little hedgehogs used to meet at Tilly’s house, and have such merry, merry games and such nice picnics, and when they went home—they always ran home, for as soon as it was very dark they used to be afraid—and sometimes they used to say to one another, “Oh! you know Tilly has such a nice home, I think I would rather sleep all together there in her little house for the winter and have a nice, warm picnicky supper every night.” And then Tilly would say, “Ah, yes, do come and sleep in my little house.”
So just before the cold, frosty weather began, off they all ran one night to Tilly’s house, where a nice supper was spread of bread and milk, and a little brown earthenware teapot was on the table, and Tilly said: “Now come and sleep in my little house, and have your supper every night when you wake up to say good-morning. You see my little house is quite empty, but I think I can make room.”
Well, when all the little hedgehogs had had their supper, first one guest and then another curled themselves up in the corners till now there was no room for anyone else at all, and all the little hedgehogs said, “This is too bad,” and Tilly said, “Oh yes, there is plenty of room if you would only lie closer together.”
So they all just tipped and nodded, and tipped and nodded again, and crept a little more into the corners, but there were such a great many of them that they could not find room enough for a good long sleep; still they tipped and nodded again, and finally, as there seemed little hope of anyone else coming, Tilly felt sure that now they would all sleep very comfortably and find room enough. So off to sleep she went.
The next morning, however, Tilly woke before the rest and went to the door of the house just to look out for a second. Oh! what a sad shock awaited her. She turned quite pale when she saw how snowy and frosty the ground was everywhere, and how white the trees and bushes looked, which stood all round her door.
“This is too bad,” said Tilly. “I shan’t be able to go out for a whole week. Dear, dear, dear! How sorry I am I forgot to collect my food yesterday. How many of my poor little friends will sleep well, do you think, for the next week on what I am sure they have? Why! I wonder how they will like sleeping there in my little house. Sixteen of us all sleeping together is surely too great a number for my little room. I am sure some may be rather put out one leg, or one paw, or somewhere else to make room for the rest. I fear they will be a little, little narrow after all. I am very sorry they came to my little room to sleep altogether; but, nasty, cold winter! it was not polite of you to come and catch us out in the ways I now tell you.”
Then she walked back into her little bedroom, and what a surprising, astonishing sight she saw there! As soon as she went to bed she was happy and content—and oh! how glad she was that she invited her friends! For there they all were, still sleeping away in her room, quite, quite upside down. Not ants’ legs or anybody’s else were where they thought their heads were, but where anybody else’s heels were, or anybody’s other legs; and Tilly herself—for she was rather nice in her person—had all her own feet, and all her friends’ feet scratching one another’s sleepy eyes wide awake; and all sixteen twenty-four feet scratching all the noses and eyes of the rest in the most affectionate, the most unendurable way possible.
Tilly called them all ancestors. The others only made rowdyish remarks to one another. And when they all scrambled out of bed and round to the sitting-room, they looked very funny indeed in the cold breakfast-room still shaking their little knees. Tilly’s house looked rather empty for a minute, because all the people whom Tilly kept had rather odd, only intermediate unripe degrees of stomach exposure behind them. And you will understand that they paid much more attention to getting pure white and heating tea down their insides than to opening drawers and cupboards, and pots and pans, and touring for the milk, and for every other ablution necessary to their rather muddyly natural being.
The meal finished, they began to look more, more human—especially Tilly. But although their minds were now perfectly calm and unexcited, they still shook their little knee-like legs and feet from the effects of their uncombed and entangled heads.
What was to be done? They pitched about without a home, for their little bodies were torn and tattered, their skins and limbs sore and lacerated. Oh dear! Oh dear! They were afraid to touch their five more skins, and their living Optics, and especially their noses.
To be sure, the little friends had brought nothing to eat or to drink; and yet everything—when we quite calmly think of it together—was under the very sad circumstances strangely comic this very morning; and everything certainly exactly suited those who were waiting at all places for everyone else to wear sufficient warmth and courage and comfort everywhere all over their exposed uncovered little bodies. These friends were, moreover, for everything, showing courage, waiting, even to snowy and frost-hurt bodies, as one who has thought of everything can do. Some were so stupidly absent that they overlooked the little others completely, who were so wide awake and so very anxious.
At last they said: “Well, if you knew how hard it is to find a good friend’s house, three inches every way larger to creep into, with the fetish and sin, or put away to meet somewhere behind—if you did you wouldn’t ‘ve been so excited as you are. Now let us meet somewhere behind.”
They all ran in single file round under the fireplace—ah, did you happen to see that? or do you know and remember that furniture establishments have a better domestic freak of themselves, when you see their shoals of family always rushing into their insides, down and up, instead of running out into and immediately behind such horrible bits of carpets.
Well, should you be sceptical—and I think it likely, to have been shocked; but as that has happened, didn’t i yourself be behind them rung the bell outside, of course; in really, really good nature, but very unreasonable—sish! But mind, my dears, I never either told or confirmed so very nasty a rumor.
Upon the following winter evening Tilly repeated her request that her friends would sleep nowhere else, and have their neighborly supper and be comfortable every evening etc., and for that purpose again tip the lids of teapots looking from tall glass tables down at you from all behind and in front cum them, each at the head of their caps and warmest coverings, and tarts, wherever they had any.
At these words out rushed somebody from behind and under.
“Well, a drowsier, deferentialer, kinder,” murmured a little flowerpot, “that is, willy-nilly thankful. That’s all I can say.”