A boy in a checkered suit, with a short
tail and long ears. He answers to the
name of Jimmy Rabbit. A reward will be
paid for his return, and no questions asked.
MRS. RABBIT,
Near the Big Pine Tree.
"There!" said Jasper Jay, proudly. "That ought to fetch him, if anything
will." And he and Mrs. Rabbit took the sign down to the road and hung it
on a fence-post.
"Why do you say 'No questions asked'?" she inquired.
"That's the way it's always done," said Jasper.
Now, it was almost as Jasper Jay had thought. Jimmy Rabbit was at the
gypsies' camp. But he hadn't been stolen. He was skulking about, as near
the gypsies as he dared to go. And he was so interested in what he saw
that he had entirely forgotten to go home to dinner. But late in the
afternoon he began to have such a queer feeling in his stomach that he
remembered then that he had had nothing to eat since breakfast. And he
started off up the road, towards home.
You can imagine how surprised he was when he stopped and read Jasper
Jay's sign. As soon as he had read it a second time he decided that he
had better hurry home a little faster. For he could see that his mother
was worried.
So Jimmy jumped through the fence and went hopping across the meadow.
Soon he was home again; and Mrs. Rabbit was hugging him and asking him
where he had been and what he had been doing.
Jimmy was just going to tell her. But he happened to think that when his
mother learned that he had been at the gypsies' camp all day she might
not be pleased. And then he remembered that sign.
"Why don't you answer me?" Mrs. Rabbit asked. "You'd better speak up at
once. Where have you been?"
"But the sign said 'No questions asked'!" Jimmy reminded her.
When she heard that, Mrs. Rabbit gasped.
"Yes!" Jimmy went on. "And it said 'A reward will be paid for his
return'!"
Mrs. Rabbit gasped again. She saw that Jasper Jay had got her into
trouble. It seemed to her that it would be very hard to have to pay a
reward to her own son. But Mrs. Rabbit was a person who always kept her
word.
"Well," she said, "what do you want?"
"I think," Jimmy told her, "that I would like something to eat."
"Then the gypsies didn't give you your dinner," Mrs. Rabbit said.
"No, Mother!" Jimmy answered, before he thought. So you see that Mrs.
Rabbit found out where he had been, after all, even though she asked no
questions.
It is very hard to keep anything from one's mother.
[Illustration: 15 Telling Fortunes]
15