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nothing to give and are too ailing to help, like the aged ferret, nearly blind, who lived for several years in one of the best bedrooms, or the tiny orphaned squirrels, recently abandoned on the doorstep, who were too young to do anything but run in circles and squeal. These needy creatures are always welcomed and given a chance to rest and recuperate—or to grow up, as the case may be.
    To manage the place currently requires a staff of three badgers: Hyacinth, the hosteller; Hyacinth’s mother, Primrose, the chief housekeeper; and Parsley, the cook. Primrose is assisted by the rabbit twins, Flotsam and Jetsam, who keep the place in tidy order, help with the laundry and the sweeping out, and run errands (rabbits are very good at this). Parsley has a kitchen helper named Honey, a pretty little hedgehog, quite a capable cook for her young age, and a dormouse named Hazel, who is exceptionally good at gathering the nuts and berries that Parsley incorporates into various dishes.
    Bosworth Badger, the clan’s pater familias , bestowed the Badge of Authority upon Hyacinth the previous year. (The Badge entitles the bearer to great respect and bestows upon her the responsibility of ensuring the safety and comfort of all the sett’s residents.) Having relinquished his post as hosteller to Hyacinth, Bosworth now serves as chief recorder emeritus for the History of the Badgers of the Land Between the Lakes and its companion work, the Genealogy. Bosworth is teaching Hyacinth all she needs to know to continue with these important volumes when he is gone—a time that will come soon, he feels, for he is by now quite an old badger and has lived a comfortable span of years. This idea does not make him at all sad or fearful, for like all animals—except for we humans, of course, who are too smart for our own good—Bosworth accepts with equanimity the fact that his days are numbered.
    Usually, the badgers and their helpers are busy throughout the day and well into the evening, when they finally sit down and toast their toes at the fire and relax, whilst Hyacinth reads aloud from their favorite books. This week, they are reading Miss Potter’s The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and enjoying it very much. (I am sorry to report, however, that they were not at all fond of The Tale of Mr. Tod , which does not portray badgers at their best . Miss Potter, it seems, is remarkably ill-informed about the true nature of Meles meles . There may be some badgers who, like the notorious Tommy Brock, wear dirty clothes and go to bed in their boots, but The Brockery badgers are not among that unkempt clan.)
    As I say, the badgers are an industrious lot and spend most of the day doing their chores. You’d be surprised to know how many chores a badger can find to do. Their family Latin motto, engraved on the family coat of arms, hangs over the fireplace in The Brockery library:
    De Parvis, grandis acervus erit
    Some translate this as “Do a little bit every day, and you will accomplish a lot.” Or in the vernacular of the Land Between the Lakes: “Many littles make a mickle; many mickles make a mile.”
    But today is Parsley’s birthday, and the hardworking badgers have laid aside their tasks and are taking a half-holiday to celebrate with a picnic. Hyacinth made cucumber, egg, mayonnaise, and cress sandwiches and deviled two dozen cuckoo eggs (removed from the robin nests where clever cuckoos put them, to be hatched and fed by the mother robins). Primrose baked her famous carrot cake, and the rabbits fashioned party hats out of paper doilies decorated with crayon and bits of colored ribbon. Hyacinth invited Rascal, the little fawn-colored Jack Russell terrier from the village. He had brought a basket of snapdragons, daisies, and marigolds for Parsley, who put them in the middle of the picnic cloth for all to enjoy.
    By the time the picnic was over, every sandwich, every egg, and all the birthday cake had disappeared. Not a crumb was left.
    “Ah,” said