Once upon a time, in a quiet meadow not far from a great city, there lived a little mouse called Milo. He lived there quite comfortably because there was a great abundance of seed and corn that had been dropped in the harvest field near by, and in summer there were all sorts of fruits that the fields and hedges produced. Before winter came Milo collected enough to last him all the cold weather.
One day, as Milo was running home to his hole, he saw resting on a cabbage-leaf just beside the brink of the brook a piece of money. It was a gold coin which had been dropped out of somebody’s pocket when he had bought something. Milo was overjoyed. “How rich I shall be,” said he. “I will buy me a fur coat and a pair of red slippers, and I shall have money enough to live upon till I die.”
So he took the piece of money in his little paw, and ran off towards home. But on the way there he met an old cousin called Maccus, who said to him, “My dear Milo, where are you going with such a bright shiny thing in your paw?”
“Oh! cousin,” said he, “I have found a piece of gold. Look, is it not beautiful?”
Maccus took the money in his hand and turned it round and round in his fore-paws. “Praise be thanks!” said he. “No one can be very long in want of food who has a piece of money like that to buy it with.”
Milo shook his head. “It is of no use to me until I buy something to eat with it.”
“Come along with me, Milo,” said old Maccus, who was very fond of his little cousin. “I happen to know that a fat grain merchant has just come into town. A lucky thought has brought me into the way where he is. Come along with me. We will buy you a good meal together; it will be a satisfaction to use the money before we die.”
“Oh! yes,” said Milo, half in a sleep, but he was waking up. “I hope Uncle Maccus has come across a nice juicy bit of cheese or a good sausage.”
Old Maccus thought to himself, “Ah! if only it was cheese or sausage she had bought but what is of far better use, she brought me a whole sack full of grain.” And then he told Milo what she had bought.
When they got into the street, Milo said, “Now you see, Uncle Maccus, how well I have done to follow you, for people have talked so much of these grains that I felt quite curious to taste them. Do you know what I will do? I hope Auntie will let me have a sack full.”
So they went home together. When they came close to the house, he said, “I don’t know how to manage about getting the sack in. I have got a hole here, you see” (and he put his paw into the side hole just big enough to let him in), “I can only tell you we can only just squeeze through one at a time.”
So Milo went in and held the door open, whilst his uncle outside handed in sack after sack, full of newly picked corn. So they thought there would be enough for a good dinner tomorrow. Before long Maccus went home, and Milo went to bed, loaded with cares and filled with visions of the future.
But in the morning came Auntie. “I can tell you this is very good eating,” said Milo to himself, as he nibbled away. Now she had not had supper either, and after she had eaten a little, she said, “Give me some grains also. You see she is going to take some of my dinner,” thought Milo. And Milo got some, and Auntie first pecked at them and then nibbled them all.
And when Uncle Maccus came, “Cousin,” said he, “instead of a fur coat, why do you not give your wife a fur coat, and buy yourself a pair of warm red slippers, then you would look well.”
It was thus after all decided that the money was nothing to Milo . And the next day he met a widow like himself and the best was saved for her and for her children, and Grandma did not get one grain except out of necessity.
So, who could wonder at it if all these people afterwards came to him and said, “Oh! Maccus, how shall we manage without a helping hand since our good friend Milo is dead.”
“Why, the thing is as clear to me as that I am living and standing here all day for my friends; I am not willing to die before any one of them has died of hunger. But it is quite a different thing with the principal Thomkins. He lately got a large sum of money for a prize composition he had written. So if it had been ever so much in addition to it, he could have carried all the whole of his posterity on his back.”
And when he was with a suitable pile on his back, he met all the others before his hole and was half tempted to beg them to take a little for old acquaintance’ sake, but he said to himself, “No, I will remain above ground until I have seen the end of the hedge from the little mist where the sun rises in a straight line to the little mist where the sun sets.”
And when he had done it, he said to himself, “Now it would not have discovered me, whatever little quarrels took place amongst them, if the whole family of the Blue Gaily has not appeared on the scene. The whole affair is now in the wind, for she prattles so much, that if she was placed on the empty nail over a four pair of stairs, she could not either Northgate, Offgate, St. Andrews passage, or St. Giles’s or Queen’s street.”
“But listen!” said Milo, who was never tired of hearing news. “Have they actually discovered anything yet?”
“They found a little wooden pail that has been in the water a whole day and grits and sand.”
“Oh! I understand, the pail itself was not made of grits and sand, but the grain having got into the last hole of the water-pipe stopped it. But, no, Thomkins is not going to die yet, the whole hole must be cleared.”
Milo after visiting his friends the Thomkins and finding that old Maccus had come out of the wood got the very best information of all what sort of action with regard to the corpse itself the family all went in procession to the grave to carry out what Cousin Maccus afterwards read over him; one spoke a little all on account of one. And old Maccus wound up principally just what I was to say.
This was in fact Mr. Chemist’s formula of giving Maccus to the grave without any fright. When this was finished they hoped for good Autumn weather.