The Heart of a Mouse
It was lovely to be back m Norway once again in my grandmother's fine old house. But nowthat I was so small, everything looked different and it took me quite a while to find my way around.
Mine was a world of carpets and table-legs and chair-legs and the little crannies behind large piecesof furniture. A closed door could not be opened and nothing could be reached that was on a table.
But after a few days, my grandmother began to invent gadgets¹ for me in order to make life abit easier. She got a carpenter to put together a number of slim tall stepladders and she placed one ofthese against each table in the house so that I could climb up whenever I wanted to. She herselfinvented a wonderful door-opening device made out of wires and springs and pulleys, with heavyweights dangling³ on cords, and soon every door in the house had a door-opener on it. All I had to dowas to press my front paws on to a tiny wooden platform and hey presto⁴, a spring would stretch and aweight would drop and the door would swing open.
Next, she rigged⁵ up an equally ingenious⁶ system whereby⁷ I could switch on the lightwhenever I entered a room at night. I cannot explain how it worked because I know nothing aboutelectricity, but there was a little button let into the floor near the door in every room in the house, andwhen I pressed the button gently with one paw, the light would come on. When I pressed it a secondtime, the light would go off again.
My grandmother made me a tiny toothbrush, using matchstick for the handle, and into this shestuck little bits of bristle⁸ that she had snipped⁹ off one of her hairbrushes. "You must not get any holesin your teeth," she said. "I can't take a mouse to a dentist! He'd think I was crazy!""It's funny," I said, "but ever since I became a mouse I've hated the taste of sweets andchocolate. So I don't think I'll get any holes.""You are still going to brush your teeth after every meal," my grandmother said. And I did.

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