of Donny's old bones. Keeping the lawnmower straight, and enjoying the smell of cut grass, and feeling your own strong earth solid under your feet, is a healthy pleasure.
But though Mr. Mistletoe was very happy mowing the grass, he looked serious. Perhaps he wag thinking? Certainly there was plenty to think about. I wonder what there was about his ground that made it so attractive to moles. Every time he thought he had got the front grass-plot in pretty good order, there appeared a new lot of their wrinkly little subways. Then these soft tunnels had to be all carefully trodden down or else flattened out with the heavy roller. Worst of all was when Donny and Fritz would decide to give some help in the mole problem. Then, when Mr. Mistletoe came back in the evening, he would find a ragged zigzag furrow, ten or fifteen feet long, dug up one of the terraces; or a hole big enough to bury a neighbour's child in. These excavations were worse to repair than all the tunnels a whole family of moles could make in a month.
Another thing Mr. Mistletoe used to think about, as he went solemnly to and fro with the lawnmower (stopping now and then to light his
