after that everything changed. There was no more bread and jam on the
table, and no more playing bo-peep, first this side of the samovar and
then that, as she sat with her father at tea. It was worse than that,
for she never did sit at tea. The stepmother said that everything that
went wrong was the little girl's fault. And the old man believed his
new wife, and so there were no more kind words for his little
daughter. Day after day the stepmother used to say that the little
girl was too naughty to sit at table. And then she would throw her a
crust and tell her to get out of the hut and go and eat it somewhere
else.

And the poor little girl used to go away by herself into the shed in
the yard, and wet the dry crust with her tears, and eat it all alone.
Ah me! she often wept for the old days, and she often wept at the
thought of the days that were to come.

Mostly she wept because she was all alone, until one day she found a
little friend in the shed. She was hunched up in a corner of the shed,
eating her crust and crying bitterly, when she heard a little noise.
It was like this: scratch--scratch. It was just that, a little gray
mouse who lived in a hole.

Out he came, his little pointed nose and his long whiskers, his little
round ears and his bright eyes. Out came his little humpy body and his
long tail. And then he sat up on his hind legs, and curled his tail
twice round himself and looked at the little girl.

The little girl, who had a kind heart, forgot all her sorrows, and
took a scrap of her crust and threw it to the little mouse. The
mouseykin nibbled and nibbled, and there, it was gone, and he was