Fox was preparing her breakfast when she heard soft footsteps across her mossy porch.
“This must be Gobina” thought Fox after listening more carefully. “She is the lightest of my friends and almost floats above the moss. I wonder what brings her here at this early hour.”
Strangely, nobody knocked.
Fox heard a rustling sound instead and went to see what was going on. On the floor, next to the main entrance, lay a small piece of paper. Fox picked it up and inspected it thoroughly. It was a receipt for a silver thimble, and Fox had no idea what it was doing there, on HER floor, next to the main entrance. At the same time, she knew she had never bought one.
She went back into the kitchen to turn off the stove because she was clearly going to investigate this, and she really didn’t want the porridge to burn while she did so.
She went out through one of her secret tunnels because she wanted to see who was at the main entrance and needed to remain as unnoticed as possible by coming out behind whoever was there. When she peeked out and looked towards her own main entrance, Fox’s jaw nearly dropped to the floor.
There was nobody there at all. She noticed something else though, something she had not noticed before. At the very bottom of her main door stood a tiny round door, with a silver thimble hanging beside it as a bell. The whole scene looked as if it had always been there.
“Now, that door had not been there before,” thought Fox, rather perplexed. But she went back to finish her breakfast quite unbothered.
“I’ll bake some cake to go with afternoon tea,” thought Fox while enjoying her porridge. “I might be getting some additional visitors today.”
She smiled at the thought, but then the smile grew into an even bigger grin…
“Unless that new door leads somewhere else, of course.”