goes back empty on Saturdays?"

So Timmy Willie said good-bye to his new friends, and hid in the hamper
with a crumb of cake and a withered cabbage leaf; and after much
jolting, he was set down safely in his own garden.

Sometimes on Saturdays he went to look at the hamper lying by the gate,
but he knew better than to get in again. And nobody got out, though
Johnny Town-mouse had half promised a visit.

The winter passed; the sun came out again; Timmy Willie sat by his
burrow warming his little fur coat and sniffing the smell of violets and
spring grass. He had nearly forgotten his visit to town. When up the
sandy path all spick and span with a brown leather bag came Johnny
Town-mouse!

Timmy Willie received him with open arms. "You have come at the best of
all the year, we will have herb pudding and sit in the sun."

"H'm'm! it is a little damp," said Johnny Town-mouse, who was carrying
his tail under his arm, out of the mud.

"What is that fearful noise?" he started violently.

"That?" said Timmy Willie, "that is only a cow; I will beg a little
milk, they are quite harmless, unless they happen to lie down upon you.
How are all our friends?"

Johnny's account was rather middling. He explained why he was paying
his visit so early in the season; the family had gone to the sea-side