The next morning, Theo was the first of the three children to check the kitchen.
He hadn’t actually woken up particularly early.
But once he was dressed, he ignored everything else and went straight to the kitchen doorway.
He didn’t go in immediately.
Instead, Theo stood at the entrance and carefully inspected the entire room.
First, he checked the floor they had cleaned yesterday to make sure there were no new crumbs.
Then he stared for quite a while at the corner Arthur had blocked with a piece of wood.
There were no signs that anything had chewed through it again.
The cabinet door was still properly closed, and the short piece of rope they had tied around it yesterday hadn’t come loose.
Only after confirming that nothing seemed wrong did Theo’s tense little face finally relax.
Lucas arrived a short while later.
He hadn’t noticed Theo standing in the doorway and nearly walked straight into him from behind.
Lucas stopped just in time and looked at his younger brother strangely.
“Theo, what are you doing here?” Lucas asked.
Theo didn’t move aside yet.
He continued staring into the kitchen.
“I’m checking whether the mouse came back last night,” Theo replied.
Lucas looked past him.
The floor was clean.
At least from where they were standing, nothing looked unusual.
“Did it?” Lucas asked.
“I don’t see anything yet,” Theo answered.
Theo finally started to move aside, but the moment Lucas took a step forward, he suddenly turned around again.
“Wait.”
Lucas stopped.
“What now?” he asked.
Theo looked down at his brother’s shoes and inspected them carefully.
“Are the bottoms of your shoes clean?” Theo asked.
Lucas looked down too.
He had no idea why Theo was suddenly asking, but he answered anyway.
“They’re clean.”
Theo didn’t immediately take his word for it.
He stared at Lucas’s shoes for another two seconds.
Only after confirming that there really wasn’t any mud on them did he finally step aside.
“You can go in now,” Theo said.
Lucas walked past him, then turned around.
“Is this the kitchen, or is it your inspection station?” Lucas asked.
Theo followed him inside.
“The kitchen,” he answered naturally.
“Then why are you inspecting me too?”
“Because there was a mouse yesterday,” Theo replied without hesitation.
Lucas opened his mouth.
He couldn’t quite see the direct connection between those two things.
But then he remembered that Theo normally wanted to wash his hands immediately if he got even a little mud on them.
Lucas decided not to ask.
If he did, Theo could probably give him a very serious explanation that lasted several minutes.
By the time Clara arrived, both boys were already standing in the kitchen.
She still had the sheet of paper covered in notes in her hand.
As soon as she entered, she casually started to put it down on one side of the table.
Theo immediately stopped her.
“Clara, don’t put it there,” he warned.
Clara paused and looked at the spot.
“Why?”
Theo pointed toward the side closer to the corner of the wall.
“That’s where the mouse came in yesterday.”
Clara followed his finger.
She was silent for a moment.
Then she moved the paper to the other side of the table.
“Is this all right?” Clara asked.
Theo inspected the new spot carefully.
“Yes.”
Clara put the paper down and looked at him.
“Are you planning to inspect the entire kitchen again today?”
“I already did,” Theo replied.
Clara stared at him.
Apparently, she had arrived too late.
When Arthur and Helena came in, they found all three children gathered around the table.
Arthur looked at them, then glanced at the cabinet door that was still tied shut.
“Having a meeting this early?” he asked.
“No,” Clara replied.
She spread her nearly full sheet of paper across the table.
“I was thinking about our food.”
Helena had been about to get what she needed for breakfast, but she stopped.
“What made you think about that all of a sudden?” Helena asked.
“It wasn’t all of a sudden,” Clara explained.
She looked down at the section where she had previously recorded their food supplies.
They had already written down what food remained in the house.
But at the time, all they really knew was that there wasn’t much.
They had never seriously worked out exactly how little they had.
Over the past few days, one problem had followed another.
First, they inspected the house and the land.
Then came the rain and the leaking roof.
Immediately after that, they discovered a mouse in the kitchen.
The food shortage had always been there, but every time they started thinking about it, something more urgent pushed it aside.
Yesterday’s damaged oat sack had reminded Clara of it again.
If they were upset over even the small amount of food a mouse might have eaten, then their supplies had clearly reached the point where saying we still have a little left was no longer enough.
Clara looked up at her parents.
“How many more days can we actually keep eating what we have?” she asked.
The kitchen fell quiet.
Arthur had been about to answer.
But after thinking about it, he realized he couldn’t.
Helena didn’t know either.
They knew they didn’t have much flour left.
There were still some oats and dried beans.
Only a few onions remained.
But whether all of that could feed five people for five days, seven days, or longer, no one had ever properly calculated.
Arthur looked at his wife.
“When we checked everything yesterday, did you estimate how much was left?” he asked.
Helena shook her head.
“We don’t have a scale,” she replied.
“I could tell there wasn’t much, but I couldn’t work out the exact amount.”
Clara thought for a moment.
“What if we don’t use a scale?” she asked.
Helena looked at her daughter.
“What do you mean?”
Clara pushed the paper forward.
“We don’t know how much everything weighs, but we can record how much we use for each meal,” she explained.
“If we always measure it with the same thing, then at least we’ll know how many cups we used today and how many we use tomorrow.”
Arthur quickly understood.
“For example, half a cup of flour for one meal?” he asked.
Clara nodded.
“Exactly.”
Lucas thought the idea made sense too.
“Then we don’t need to know how many pounds we started with,” Lucas added.
“As long as we always use the same cup, we can at least see how quickly the food is disappearing.”
Arthur considered it.
It obviously wouldn’t be perfectly accurate, but it was much better than relying entirely on guesswork.
“We can try it,” Arthur agreed.
“Though one cup might be slightly fuller than another.”
Clara already understood that.
“It doesn’t have to be exact,” she said.
“We just need a rough idea of how long the food will last.”
That reminded Arthur of what they actually needed.
They didn’t need to calculate the exact meal when their supplies would run out.
They just needed enough information to know when they absolutely had to find more food.
Helena saw that everyone had more or less agreed.
“Then let’s see roughly how much we have left first,” she suggested.
Theo immediately followed when his mother went to untie the cabinet.
Helena removed the short rope and opened the door.
Theo leaned forward and inspected the inside first.
They had cleaned the cabinet thoroughly yesterday, and all the food sacks had been moved to the higher shelf.
There were no new crumbs.
Only then did Theo decide there was no need to mention the mouse again.
Helena brought out the flour first and placed it on the table.
Then came the oats and dried beans.
She put the few remaining onions beside them.
They still had the small separate bundle of dried beans they had found earlier, but since those might be seeds, they decided not to count them as food.
Arthur picked up a wooden bowl.
“Should we use this to measure?” he asked.
Clara took one look and shook her head.
“No.
We still use that bowl for eating.”
Arthur didn’t see the problem.
“We can wash it.”
Before Clara could answer, Theo frowned.
“But we’re putting flour in it,” he said.
Arthur turned toward his younger son.
Theo clearly disliked the idea of repeatedly using their eating bowl to measure food.
Especially after yesterday’s mouse incident.
Arthur personally thought washing the bowl would solve the problem, but one look at Theo’s face told him there was little point trying to explain.
Helena searched around for a while and eventually found a small wooden cup they rarely used.
“Then we’ll use this,” Helena suggested.
“From now on, it can be just for measuring food.”
Clara took it and inspected it.
It was always the same size, and they didn’t need it for meals.
“This works,” she agreed.
Arthur instinctively looked at Theo.
“What does our hygiene inspector think?” he asked.
Theo took the wooden cup and examined it carefully.
“Wash it first,” he decided.
Arthur wasn’t surprised in the slightest.
“Fine.
We’ll wash it first.”
The cup was washed and carefully dried.
Theo even checked the inside himself to make sure there was no water left before finally allowing it anywhere near the flour sack.
Arthur watched his son’s extremely serious inspection.
“Maybe you should be in charge of checking the food from now on,” he suggested.
Theo shook his head immediately.
“No.”
Arthur was surprised.
“Why not?”
Theo looked at the open flour sack.
“It might get on my hands.”
Arthur had no response.
In the end, Helena did the measuring.
She used the wooden cup to estimate how much flour remained while Clara sat beside her and recorded it.
They didn’t want to keep pouring all the flour in and out just for the sake of measuring it, so Helena only made a rough estimate.
They ended up with a little more than eleven cups.
Arthur thought that sounded surprisingly decent.
“Eleven cups doesn’t sound too bad,” he said.
Helena tied the sack closed again.
“That’s because the cup is tiny,” she reminded him.
Arthur looked down at the wooden cup.
It wasn’t even as large as his palm.
The small amount of optimism he had just gained immediately disappeared.
Next came the oats.
The moment Helena brought over the sack that the mouse had bitten yesterday, Theo quietly took a step backward.
Clara noticed.
“Theo, why are you standing so far away?” she asked.
Theo stared at the sack.
“That’s the one from yesterday.”
Clara knew exactly what he meant.
“Mom already removed the oats around the hole,” she reminded him.
“I know.”
“Then why are you still staying so far away?”
Theo looked at his sister.
“Knowing it’s clean now doesn’t mean I want to stand next to it.”
Lucas let out a small laugh.
Theo immediately turned toward him.
Lucas quickly stopped smiling.
“I didn’t say anything.”
Only then did Theo turn back toward the sack.
They had slightly more oats than flour.
The onions were the real problem.
Only a few remained, and one of them was already starting to soften.
Helena picked it up and inspected it.
“We need to eat this one first,” she said.
“Otherwise it really will spoil if we leave it much longer.”
Theo immediately looked up.
“It isn’t spoiled yet?” he asked.
“No,” Helena replied.
“It’s only starting to soften.”
Theo still looked suspicious.
“Can we really eat it?”
Helena patiently looked at her son.
“Yes, Theo.
We can eat it,” she assured him.
“If it were spoiled, I wouldn’t put it in your food.”
Only after receiving that promise did Theo reluctantly nod.
By the time they had roughly measured everything, several new lines had appeared on Clara’s paper.
She stared down at the numbers for quite a while and tried to calculate them.
Eventually, she shook her head.
Arthur had been waiting beside her.
“Can’t work it out?” he asked.
“No,” Clara replied.
She looked up.
“Because we don’t know how much we actually eat in one day.”
That was the biggest problem.
They had never kept track of how much food they used for each meal.
Sometimes they cooked a little more.
Sometimes a little less.
Arthur obviously ate more after spending an entire morning working.
And although the three children didn’t think like ordinary three-year-olds, their bodies really were only three.
Naturally, they ate much less than the two adults.
Besides, they didn’t eat the same thing every day.
Sometimes oats and beans were cooked together.
Flour was used differently.
Onions were only added to other food.
If they insisted on calculating an exact number of days now, they would still mostly be guessing.
Lucas stood beside his sister and thought for a while.
“Then we start recording from today,” he suggested.
Clara turned toward him.
Lucas continued.
“We write down how much we use today and tomorrow.
After a few days, we should have a rough idea of how much we eat in one day.”
Arthur nodded.
“That’s more practical.”
Helena agreed too.
“And we don’t eat exactly the same thing every day,” she added.
“One day definitely won’t be enough.
We’ll record several days and then look at the average.”
Clara lowered her head to write that down.
But just as the tip of her pencil touched the paper, she stopped.
Arthur knew the reason immediately.
“No room left?” he asked.
Clara nodded.
They had been using the same sheet ever since they started inspecting the house.
It had notes about food and tools.
The cabinet door.
The floor.
Seeds.
The roof.
Even Nobody in this family knows how to farm and Dad can’t hold the hoe for too long had taken up a line.
Now both sides were almost completely full.
Arthur stared at the densely covered sheet.
It seemed their household was short of yet another thing.
“Looks like paper needs to go on the list of things we need eventually,” he said.
Clara immediately looked up.
“But we can’t waste money buying it now.”
Arthur laughed.
“I know.
We don’t even know how long our food will last.
We’re not going to buy paper first.”
Helena thought for a moment.
“There might be some old paper around the house that’s already been written on,” she suggested.
“Let’s look.
If the back is blank, we can still use it.
It doesn’t have to be new.”
That was clearly much more practical than buying paper.
So the family of five, who had originally been gathered around their food, started searching through the drawers they hadn’t thoroughly organized yet.
They actually found several old sheets at the bottom of one drawer.
There was already writing on them.
They could only recognize a few scattered words and had no way of knowing what the papers had originally been used for.
For now, they decided not to worry about that.
The backs were blank.
That was enough.
Clara was visibly pleased.
She flattened one of the sheets and carefully wrote a heading at the top.
Daily Food Record
Arthur sat beside her.
“Starting with lunch?” he asked.
Clara shook her head.
“Breakfast too.”
“But we already ate breakfast.”
Clara immediately turned toward Helena.
“Mom, do you remember roughly how much you used this morning?”
Helena thought back.
“More or less.”
Since she could remember, Clara added the approximate amount from breakfast too.
Once that was done, Helena started preparing lunch.
This time, Clara didn’t simply sit nearby and remind her about the heat.
She kept the new sheet of paper and the measuring cup beside her.
Helena was just about to take some oats when Clara stopped her.
“Mom, measure it first,” she reminded her.
Helena paused.
She had nearly forgotten the rule they had just made.
“Right.
I almost forgot.”
She measured the oats with the wooden cup before pouring them into the pot.
Then she measured the dried beans.
Naturally, the onion that had started to soften was also the first one to be used.
Theo watched Helena pick it up.
He still couldn’t resist asking one more time.
“Mom, it really isn’t spoiled?”
Helena turned toward him.
“Theo.”
Theo looked up.
“Hmm?”
“It really isn’t spoiled,” Helena said firmly.
Theo finally stopped asking.
After several quiet seconds, however, he added,
“If it’s bad inside when you cut it open, don’t put it in.”
Helena was already struggling not to laugh.
“All right.
I won’t.”
Arthur was nearby studying the cabinet door that still refused to stay shut properly.
Without looking up, he commented,
“Your mother has her own food inspector now.”
Theo turned toward his father.
“Bad food makes your stomach hurt,” he said seriously.
Arthur nodded immediately.
“You’re right.”
Satisfied that his father understood, Theo stopped interfering with Helena’s cooking.
When lunch was ready, the family of five paid real attention to how much each person ate for the first time.
Arthur ate the most.
Helena came next.
The three children ate noticeably less.
Halfway through the meal, Theo noticed Arthur serving himself a little more.
He looked down at his father’s bowl.
Then he turned toward Clara.
“Do we have to record that too?” Theo asked.
Arthur froze with his spoon halfway to his mouth.
Clara followed Theo’s gaze.
It took her a moment to understand what he meant.
“We don’t need to record how much each person eats yet,” Clara explained.
“We only need to record how much food we used for the whole meal.”
Arthur visibly relaxed.
“That makes more sense.”
Theo was still staring at his father’s bowl.
“But Dad is eating a second bowl,” he pointed out.
Arthur looked down at his food.
“I worked this morning,” he explained.
Theo nodded.
“I know.”
Arthur looked confused.
“Then why do you keep staring at me?”
Theo answered with complete honesty.
“Because you eat the most.”
Arthur had no idea how to respond to that.
Lucas, however, thought it was perfectly normal.
“Dad is much bigger than us,” Lucas explained to Theo.
“And he does most of the heavy work.”
Theo thought about it.
That made sense.
Only then did he finally stop watching Arthur’s bowl.
Arthur had barely taken a few more bites when he noticed Clara looking at him too.
After having two children inspect his meal one after another, he was starting to feel strangely self-conscious.
“Clara, what is it now?” Arthur asked.
Clara shook her head.
“Nothing.
I was just thinking that if you have to do a lot of work every day, then when we calculate how much food we need, we have to use your normal appetite.”
Arthur hadn’t thought much of it at first.
But at the second half of her sentence, his movements paused almost imperceptibly.
He had already considered something else.
If they eventually discovered that their food truly wasn’t enough, the adults could eat a little less.
At the very least, the three children needed to be fed properly.
Arthur hadn’t even said the thought aloud.
Clara seemed to know anyway.
She looked at him.
“You can’t deliberately eat less just to make the food last longer,” Clara said.
Helena immediately understood too.
She turned toward her husband.
“Did you hear that?” Helena asked.
Arthur nodded helplessly.
“I heard her.”
Lucas joined in.
“Otherwise you won’t have enough strength to work,” he pointed out.
“Then we’ll have an even bigger problem.”
Theo thought about it too.
“And being hungry is bad,” he added seriously.
Arthur looked at the three children, each contributing their own argument, and laughed.
“I haven’t even said anything yet.”
Clara lowered her head and continued eating.
“We’re saying it in advance.”
Arthur had absolutely no way to win against them.
“All right,” he agreed.
“I’ll eat normally.”
Only after receiving that promise did the three children finally stop discussing his appetite.
After lunch, Clara recorded the amount of food they had actually used.
Then she sat at the table and stared at the new sheet for quite a while.
Lucas sat down beside her.
“Can you tell yet?” he asked.
Clara shook her head.
“One day still isn’t enough.”
Arthur happened to be walking past and heard her.
“We need at least three or four days.
More would be better.”
Helena was putting things away nearby.
“We eat different things every day,” she added.
“Once we have several days recorded, we can work out a more reasonable average.”
Clara nodded.
She added another note to the paper.
Keep recording every day.
Arthur watched her finish writing and suddenly thought of a much more practical problem.
“What if we eventually calculate it and find out the food will only last a few more days?” he asked.
The relatively relaxed atmosphere slowly faded.
Everyone had thought about that.
They simply hadn’t said it aloud yet.
Clara’s pencil stopped.
Lucas looked up.
Even Theo, who had been checking the table for stray crumbs, went quiet.
Helena was the first to speak.
“Then we find a way,” she said.
Arthur looked at his wife.
Helena’s voice remained calm.
“We were never going to live on what’s already in this house forever,” she continued.
“Whether it turns out to be enough for ten days or twenty, the only difference is whether we have to solve the problem sooner or later.”
No one could argue with that.
They still didn’t properly understand the land.
They didn’t know whether the small bundle of dried beans they had saved would sprout.
They didn’t even know what people nearby normally grew, where they got seeds, or what the nearest town was like.
The food they already had was only ever meant to keep them going temporarily.
Sooner or later, they needed another source.
Arthur thought it through and nodded.
“That’s true.”
Lucas remembered something they had discussed before.
“Does that mean we need to go to town?” he asked.
“Eventually,” Arthur replied.
He didn’t deny it.
But he didn’t immediately decide when they should go either.
“When?” Clara asked.
Arthur thought for a moment, then shook his head.
“First we need to understand the area around us,” he explained.
“We don’t even know which road leads to town.
We can’t just start walking in a random direction.”
There was another practical problem too.
Arthur looked down at the three children.
Their minds might not belong to ordinary three-year-olds, but their bodies certainly did.
Running between the house and the field was one thing.
If they had to walk a long distance, Arthur and Helena would probably end up carrying them sooner or later.
Theo noticed his father staring at them.
“Dad, why are you looking at us?” he asked.
Arthur didn’t hide the reason.
“I’m wondering how far the three of you can walk.”
Theo immediately straightened.
“I can walk.”
Arthur raised an eyebrow.
“How far?”
Theo opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
He really couldn’t answer that.
Lucas was much more realistic.
“Probably not very far,” he admitted.
“And even if we get there, we still have to walk back.”
Clara nodded too.
They didn’t even have a cart.
If the town was genuinely far away, having all five of them walk there and back was obviously not a very good plan.
Arthur saw that the children had figured it out themselves.
“So we won’t rush to town yet,” he decided.
“First, we’ll see whether anyone lives nearby and figure out where the roads go.”
For now, that settled the matter.
That afternoon, Arthur finally dealt with the cabinet door that never stayed shut.
The problem wasn’t particularly serious.
One side was slightly crooked, and the wood had warped with age.
Every time the door closed, it would simply spring open again the moment someone let go.
Arthur worked on it for quite a while.
After making several adjustments, he finally pushed the door closed again.
It shut.
Slowly, Arthur removed his hand.
The door stayed closed.
Theo stood nearby, staring at it without moving.
One second.
Two.
Three.
The cabinet door still didn’t open.
Theo finally looked up at his father.
“Is it fixed?” he asked.
After the roof incident, Arthur had clearly become more cautious.
“It looks fixed for now,” he replied.
Clara happened to be walking past.
She laughed when she heard him.
“Dad really doesn’t make promises so easily anymore.”
Arthur looked at his daughter.
“It’s called learning from experience.”
Lucas came over too.
He opened the cabinet door himself.
Then he closed it again.
It stayed shut.
Lucas nodded.
“It really is fixed.”
Arthur finally looked a little more satisfied.
“See?”
Theo, however, still hadn’t given his approval.
He walked up to the cabinet and carefully inspected the gap between the closed doors.
He even crouched down to look upward from below.
Arthur stared at his younger son.
“What are you checking now?”
Theo didn’t look up.
“I’m checking whether the mouse can get in.”
Arthur had nothing to say.
Only after confirming that there was no gap large enough for a mouse did Theo finally stand up and nod very seriously.
“It’s good.”
Arthur couldn’t resist.
“Thank you for your approval.”
“You’re welcome,” Theo replied just as seriously.
Arthur paused.
Clara was the first to burst out laughing.
Lucas laughed too.
Even Helena, who was on the other side of the kitchen, looked over.
“What happened?” she asked.
Arthur glanced at Theo, who clearly had no idea why everyone was laughing.
“Nothing,” Arthur replied helplessly.
“Our inspector has approved the repair.”
Theo heard him and nodded.
“Approved.”
That made Helena laugh too.
By evening, Clara carefully recorded the food used for dinner.
Their first full day of records was finally complete.
One day still wasn’t enough to calculate anything useful, but this time Clara didn’t seem as impatient as she had that morning.
At least they were no longer relying on the vague feeling that they “didn’t have much.”
If they kept recording for a few more days, they would eventually have a rough idea.
Arthur was clearing the table when he noticed Clara still sitting there, staring at the sheet.
“Stop calculating,” he told her.
“You won’t get an answer today.”
Clara looked up.
“I’m not calculating.”
Arthur paused.
“Then what are you staring at?”
Clara looked down at the record.
After a moment, she spoke quietly.
“I’m wondering what happens if it really isn’t enough.”
Arthur’s movements slowed.
He knew Clara wasn’t simply worrying for no reason.
She liked to think things through in advance.
Arthur put down what he was holding and sat beside his daughter.
“If it really isn’t enough, then we go out and find a solution,” he said.
Clara looked at him.
Arthur continued.
“We can go to town, find work we can do, figure out how to buy food, or ask around and see how people nearby manage.
We know almost nothing about the world outside this house right now, so there’s no point imagining every worst-case possibility before we’ve even looked.”
Clara still seemed worried.
“But we don’t have much money either.”
“I know.”
“And we don’t know how to farm yet.”
“I know.”
“And we don’t have seeds.”
Arthur finally laughed.
“If you keep going, I really might not be able to sleep tonight.”
That made Clara smile too.
Arthur reached over and gently ruffled his daughter’s hair.
“That’s why we deal with things one at a time,” he said.
“Today, we start keeping track of the food.
Tomorrow, we deal with tomorrow’s problem.”
Clara thought for a moment.
“What are we doing tomorrow?” she asked.
Arthur didn’t answer immediately.
He had originally planned to continue working on the land.
But after everything they had calculated today, he was beginning to think they couldn’t keep focusing only on their run-down farmhouse and the few pieces of land around it.
At the very least, they needed to know what was nearby.
“Tomorrow, we’ll take a look around,” Arthur decided.
Clara’s eyes immediately brightened.
“We’re going out?”
“Nearby,” Arthur emphasized.
He quickly added, “Don’t get too excited.
We’re not going to town yet.
We’ll just see whether we have any neighbors and figure out where the roads go.”
Lucas and Theo had already been getting ready to rest, but the moment they heard the words going out, both of them came over.
“Are we walking far?” Lucas asked.
“No,” Arthur replied.
“We’ll stay nearby first.”
Theo, however, wasn’t interested in the distance at all.
Something entirely different had occurred to him.
“Dad.”
Arthur looked at his younger son.
“What?”
Theo asked very seriously,
“Is the road outside still muddy?”
The kitchen fell silent.
It had rained heavily only yesterday.
Although there had been no more rain today, there was no chance the ground outside had completely dried in a single day.
Arthur looked at Theo.
In the end, he decided to tell him the truth.
“…There might be a little mud.”
Half of the excitement that had just appeared on Theo’s face vanished instantly.
Clara saw his expression and burst out laughing.
“Theo, we haven’t even left the house yet.”
Theo looked down at his shoes.
“I’m thinking about how I’m going to clean them when we get back.”
Arthur didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh.
Apparently, tomorrow they had more to figure out than just where the roads went and whether anyone lived nearby.
They also had to figure out how to get one particularly cleanliness-obsessed three-year-old through a muddy country road after the rain.
Either way, they really couldn’t stay inside this old farmhouse forever.
The roof had been temporarily repaired.
The mouse hole had been blocked.
They had started recording their food one meal at a time.
Even the stubborn cabinet door finally stayed properly shut.
It was time for them to look beyond the house.
And find out what the world outside their new home was actually like.