DERRICK, THE DORMOUSE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 218, 3 December 1927, Page 27 (Supplement)

DERRICK, THE DORMOUSE

Derrick, the Dormouse, was feeling very tired and peevish. He had just settled down for his afternoon nap when the Wind Goblins began playing their rasping little fiddles in the field of corn next door and Derirck was in no mood to enjoy their music. Then a bumble bee came droning past with a loud, important “zizzing,” and blundered up and down the hedge that concealed Derrick's snug little nest. “Crunch, crunch, crunch.” Somewhere near a contented cow was grazing. Derrick could hear her heavy footsteps as she wrenched the tufts from the margin of the field. An adventurous spider ran across his nose, and presently a field mouse darted in to see if Derrick had any corn to spare. Derrick turned on his side and began to count imaginary doormice leaping through a gap in the hedge, just as boys and girls and their fathers and mothers count sheep. He had just reached number seventy-nine when Stephen Squirrel looked in at the door. “By the way, Derrick, I have found a large hazel nut that Policeman Hare says belongs to you. What had we better do about it?” Derrick took no notice whatever, and Stephen Squirrel went off muttering under his breath. Ten minutes later a Wind Goblin peered in to see if Derrick could lend him a new string for his fiddle, as he had been playing so earnestly that he had broken the old one. With a long grass blade he commenced tickling Derrick under one ear, as that is the way that Wind Goblins always wake the dormice, but Derrick lay perfectly still, with his head buried in his paws "Oh dear, oh deal',” sighed the Wind Goblin, “I had better :isk Stephen Squirrel or Policeman Hare where I can find a new fiddle string, for out of sheer perversity. Derrick, the Dormouse, has settled down into his winter sleep.”