food on the ground beside a big rubbish bin. It was all a mystery to him, what had happened, but as long as there were no cats and no terriers, he was content to stay where he was.

And the very next day, the same thing happened. The lights switched on and the people came by, pointing and talking, and admiring the things in the glass-fronted rooms. Potato felt safer this time. He wondered if the people would mind if they saw him too. Because none of the frozen people tried to slap him or stomp on him, he was feeling a lot braver towards the people who did walk and talk.

He poked his nose round the side of the couch and wiggled it.

"Oh look Mummy! There's a mouse!"

"Isn't that clever!"

"Is it supposed to be there?"

"I think it must be. They had mice in those days, didn't they."

"But it isn't a very old mouse, is it?"

"No. Mice don't live very long. I think they must have put just one mouse into the exhibition, to make it look more authentic!"

"And it's a lovely brown colour, just like the mice they used to have in those days!"

"How old do you think it is Mummy?"

"Maybe only a year, by the look of it."

By this time many other people had seen Potato's little nose, and they were gathering about the glass and saying all kinds of nice things about it, so Potato decided to risk his life a tiny bit more by poking the rest of his head into view.

The crowd of people thought this was magnificent. They squealed (the younger ones did anyway), and they made even more favorable comments, and someone went to tell the old man who sat in the little room with the biscuits what a clever Museum it was to have a real mouse as part of its exhibits.

So it wasn't very long, even in mouse-days, before people were coming from hundreds of mouse-miles just to see the real mouse in the exhibit of 1860's furniture, and Potato became tamer and tamer with all the attention, until he felt free enough to sit in the middle of the couch and clean his whiskers right in