The Three Mice: Jack, Jill and John

Once upon a story, there were three mice: Jack, Jill and John.

Jack, Jill and John lived in a big house at the end of the road. It was a very, very tall house. It had three floors and great big windows.

When Jack, Jill and John were very tired at night, they would sleep on the window seat inside the second floor and watch the world go by.

They would watch the stars shine above them.

They would watch the trees bending in the wind.

They would watch the moonlight over the trees.

They would watch the passers-by and the foxes outside. All in all, they were glad they had this wonderful view from their tall house.

The Game of Hide and Seek

One night, Jack, Jill and John decided that they would play a game. It was dark outside and the lights were on inside the house, so they decided to play hide and seek.

It was a big house.

It had three bedrooms on each floor, as well as a kitchen, a living room and a sitting room.

It was a big house in which to play hide and seek, but they thought they would try.

Jack thought, “Okay, I will go to the kitchen and hide in one of the cupboards.”

Jill started counting.

“Ten, nine, eight...”

Jack scurried off into the kitchen and hid inside one of the cupboards.

John, on the other hand, had a great idea. He would climb up a curtain and hide at the top.

When Jill came looking, she would not find him.

Jack and John hurried away to their hiding places. Jill finished counting and called out, “Okay, ready or not, I am coming to find you!”

She went from room to room and slowly worked her way through the house.

It was hard work because some of the rooms were dark. Jill had to crawl up to each light switch and turn the light on.

She checked every corner. She looked underneath the curtains, beneath the sofa, inside the cupboards and behind the television.

Finally, she found Jack hiding in the kitchen.

However, John was not in the kitchen.

John was hiding at the top of a curtain in the sitting room.

Jill pulled the curtain a little to see whether anyone was hiding there. John came tumbling down.

“Jill, you found me! You found me!” he cried.

“Of course I found you,” said Jill. “You were sitting at the top of the curtain. Of course I was going to look there.”

Jack said, “I was hiding in the kitchen. I was not in the bedrooms at all.”

The Strange Cat

“Okay, let us do some more exploring around the house,” said Jill.

As they explored, they came across a cat.

“Oh my gosh! There is a cat in the house!” they cried.

There had not been a cat there before. Where had this cat come from?

Then they looked more closely.

“Wait a minute. It is not a real cat. It is a stuffed cat.”

“How did we not see this cat before?” asked Jack.

They moved closer to investigate it.

“It smells funny,” said Jill.

“It feels funny too,” said John.

Jack, Jill and John quickly left the room and returned to their bedroom.

That was only one game of hide and seek, but all games took a long time in such a big, old house.

The three mice liked the house because it was warm and cosy. The view was wonderful, and they did not have to share it with anybody else.

There were only three mice: Jack, Jill and John.

They loved it.

The Game of Draughts

One day, as well as playing hide and seek, the mice decided to play a second game.

The second game was called draughts.

One of the mice said, “Hold on a minute. Draughts is not for mice.”

“Yes, it is! Yes, it is!” replied another. “Of course it is for mice.”

They found the draughts board, opened it and began placing the pieces on the board.

Jack and Jill were on the black team, and John was on the white team.

They placed the pieces diagonally across the board and began the game.

Jack and Jill thought, “Okay, let us begin with a nice opening.”

John counted the pieces, and they continued playing for at least ten minutes.

When the game was finished, one of the mice said, “Oh my gosh, that was so tiring.”

“Why was it so tiring?” asked John.

“Because you really studied the game and made me think carefully about my moves.”

“Well, is that not the whole point?” asked John.

“Yes, it is, but it is still tiring for a mouse brain like mine.”

They finished playing draughts. That was the second night, after the night on which they had played hide and seek.

Stories in the Moonlight

On the third night, everything was still and the moon was bright.

The mice looked out of the window and saw that there was a great deal to see in the garden.

“What can we do inside the house apart from playing hide and seek and draughts?” asked Jack.

“We have already played draughts. Let us do something different,” said Jill.

“Let us tell each other stories,” suggested John.

Then one of the mice said, “Hold on a minute. You are telling a story. How can mice tell stories in the same way? You are human, and you speak differently from mice.”

The mice spoke in mouse language, so they decided to let the narrator finish the story. Perhaps the mice could tell their own stories later.

The Big Lumbering Humans

On the fourth day after the hide-and-seek game, the three mice watched people walking past the house.

The people looked like big, lumbering creatures.

“What would happen if we ran behind them and made little noises?” asked Jack. “Would they turn around? Would they come after us?”

“Let us try it,” said Jill. “Let us play with them a little.”

Jack and Jill went first. John stayed behind and watched in case there was trouble.

Jack and Jill followed a couple of people, running close to their feet as they walked past.

Then Jack and Jill flung themselves towards the people's shoes to see what they would do.

The big, lumbering people looked down.

“Oh! Is that a mouse?” one of them asked.

“Is that a mouse? Oh my gosh!” cried another.

Then a woman screamed, “It is a mouse! It is a mouse!”

“Oh no, this is too much,” said Jack. “Let us go back. Let us go back.”

Jack and Jill hurried back to the house.

John was relieved to see them.

“Oh, thank goodness,” he said. “I thought you were gone. I thought they were going to scream and squash you or something.”

“No, no, she would not do that,” said Jill. “I think she was scared of us. She was probably not screaming to warn the others. She was just shocked.”

John laughed.

“It is funny,” he said. “We played a game by bumping into them, but they did not step on us or trample us. The woman just started screaming.”

“I do not understand these big, lumbering humans. They scream, but they do not do anything. They just hop around and shout.”

Jack and Jill nodded.

“Yes, we know. It is very strange. We must look strange to them too,” said Jack.

“We are mice. We are brown and furry, but the humans seem to think that we are very unusual.”

“Do you think they will try to chase us?” asked Jill.

“They could not chase us, could they?” asked John. “Perhaps they could smell us.”

“No,” said Jack. “Their noses are too far away from the ground.”

“Perhaps they could eat us as food,” said Jill.

“I do not know,” replied John.

The Back Garden

Jack and Jill had chased the humans while John had stayed behind and watched.

When they were safely together again, Jack and Jill said, “Okay, John, it is your turn. Let us go and see what is in the back garden. There might be some food or some biscuits.”

Jill and John went outside while Jack watched from the window of the house.

They walked around to the back garden.

“Let us see what is here,” said Jill.

“There is a pond over here, a grassy bank over there and a large pile of wood. It is all very exciting.”

“Look! There are lots of creepy-crawlies in the woodpile,” said John. “Let us have a look.”

“Oh my goodness, we could eat them,” said Jill.

“Wait a minute. You can go first if you are going to eat them,” replied John.

Then they reconsidered.

“We cannot live only on creepy-crawlies,” said Jill. “We need to eat something else. Let us find some biscuits.”

The Paper-Wrapped Biscuits

The biscuits were not in the back garden. They were inside the kitchen, behind the back door.

Jill and John scurried into the kitchen.

Jack joined them and said, “Oh, you are back in the kitchen, are you? Come in. There is fancy food here.”

“Look! There are some biscuits in the cupboard,” said Jill. “Let us get them.”

All three mice worked together to open the cupboard door.

Inside, they found a large packet of biscuits.

The biscuits were not wrapped in plastic. They were wrapped in paper.

The people who lived in the house cared about sustainability and recycling, so they did not buy biscuits in plastic wrappers. They bought paper-wrapped biscuits instead.

The mice chewed a small hole through the paper and opened the packet.

Jack, Jill and John sat together in the kitchen and happily ate the biscuits.

“We do not need tea,” said Jack.

“We are not like humans,” said Jill. “Silly humans need tea with their biscuits.”

“We can simply eat the biscuits,” said John.

They were happy with their biscuits, sitting together in the kitchen of their big house.

There they remained: Jack, Jill and John, three happy little mice together.

The End.