With Whitefoot the Wood Mouse, Danny Meadow Mouse and Nimbleheels the Jumping Mouse attending school, the Mouse family was well represented, but when school opened the morning after Nimbleheels had made his sudden and startling appearance, there was still another present. It was Piney the Pine Mouse. Whitefoot, who knew him, had hunted him up and brought him along.  
“I thought you wouldn't mind if Piney came,” explained Whitefoot.
 
“I'm glad he has come,” replied Old Mother Nature. “It is much better to see a thing than merely to be told about it, and now you have a chance to see for yourselves the differences between two cousins very closely related, Danny Meadow Mouse and Piney the Pine Mouse. What difference do you see, Happy Squirrel?”
 
“Piney is a little smaller than Danny, though he is much the same shape,” was the prompt reply.
 
“True,” said Old Mother Nature. “Now, Striped , what difference do you see?”
 
“The fur of Piney's coat is shorter, finer and has more of a shine. Then, too, it is more of a reddish-brown than Danny's,” replied Striped Chipmunk.
 
“And what do you say, Peter Rabbit?” asked Old Mother Nature.
 
“Piney has a shorter tail,” declared Peter, and everybody laughed.
 
“Trust you to look at his tail first,” said Old Mother Nature. “These are the chief differences as far as looks are concerned. Their habits differ in about the same degree. As you all know, Danny cuts little paths through the grass. Piney doesn't do this, but makes little tunnels just under the surface of the ground very much as Miner the does. He isn't fond of the open Green Meadows or of damp places as Danny is, but likes best the edge of the Green Forest and brushy places. He is very much at home in a poorly kept where the weeds are allowed to grow and in young he does a great deal of damage by cutting off the roots of young trees and stripping off the bark as high up as he can reach. Tell us, Piney, how and where you make your home.”
 
Piney hesitated a little, for he was bashful. “I make my home under ground,” he ventured finally. “I dig a nice little bedroom with several entrances from my tunnels, and in it I make a fine nest of soft grass. Close by I dig one or more rooms in which to store my food, and these usually are bigger than my bedroom. When I get one filled with food I close it up by filling the entrance with earth.”
 
“What do you put in your storerooms?” asked Peter Rabbit.
 
“Short pieces of grass and pieces of roots of different kinds,” replied Piney. “I am very fond of tender roots and the bark of trees and bushes.
 
“And he dearly loves to get in a garden where he can tunnel along a row of potatoes or other root crops,” added Old Mother Nature. “Because of these habits he does a great deal of damage and is much disliked by man. Striped Chipmunk mentioned his reddish-brown coat. There is another cousin with a coat so red that he is called the Red-backed Mouse. He is about the size of Danny Meadow Mouse but has larger ears and a longer tail.
 
“This little fellow is a lover of the Green Forest, and he is quite as active by day as by night. He is pretty, especially when he sits up to eat, holding his food in his paws as does Happy Jack Squirrel. He makes his home in a , the entrance to which is under an old , a rock or the root of a tree. His nest is of soft grass or . Sometimes he makes it in a hollow log or stump instead of digging a bedroom under ground. He is and lays up a supply of food in underground rooms, hollow logs and similar places. He eats seeds, small fruits, roots and various plants. Because of his preference for the Green Forest and the fact that he lives as a rule far from the homes of men, he does little real damage.
 
“There is still another little Redcoat in the family, and he is especially interesting because while he is related to Danny Meadow Mouse he lives almost wholly in trees. He is called the Rufous Tree Mouse. Rufous means reddish-brown, and he gets that name because of the color of his coat. He lives in the great forests of the Far West, where the trees are so big and tall that the biggest tree you have ever seen would look small beside them. And it is in those great trees that the Rufous Tree Mouse lives.
 
“Just why he took to living in trees no one knows, for he belongs to that branch of the family known as Ground Mice. ............