Then Mrs. Tiggy-winkle made tea—­a cup for herself and a cup for Lucie.  They sat before a fire on a bench and looked sideways at one another.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle’s hand, holding the tea-cup, was very very brown, and very very wrinkly with the soap suds; and all through her gown and her cap, there were hair-pins sticking wrong end out; so that Lucie didn’t like to sit to near her.

When they had finished tea, they tied up the clothes in bundles; and Lucie’s pocket-handkerchiefs were folded up inside her clean pinny, and fastened with a silver safety-pin.

And then they made up the fire with turf, and came out and locked the door, and hid the key under the door-sill.

Then away down the hill
trotted Lucie and Mrs.
Tiggy-winkle and the bundles
of clothes!

All the way down the path little animals came out of the fern to meet them; the very first that they met was Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny!

And she gave them their Nice clean clothes; and all the little animals and birds were so very much obliged to dear Mrs. Tiggy-winkle.

So that at the bottom of the hill when they came to the stile, there was nothing left to carry except Lucie’s one little bundle.

Lucie scrambled up the stile with the bundle in her hand; and then she turned to say, “Good-Night,” and to thank the washer-woman—­ But what a very odd thing!  Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle had not waited either for thanks or for the washing bill!  She was running running running up the hill—­and Where was her white frilled cap? and her shawl? and her gown—­and her petticoat?

And how small she had grown—­and how brown —­and covered with prickles!  Why!  Mrs. Tiggy-winkle was nothing but a hedgehog.

* * * * *

(Now some people say that little Lucie had been asleep upon the stile—­ but then how could she have found three clean pocket-handkins and a pinny, pinned with a silver safety pin?  And besides—­I have seen that door into the back of the hill called Cat Bells—­and besides I am very well acquainted with dear Mrs. Tiggy-winkle!)