NIBBLE RABBIT LEARNS HIS FORTUNE
Not one of the Woodsfolk could make a sound. It was all so sudden it
took their breath away. Then the sparrows began to flutter and chirp
in their noisy way, and Chatter Squirrel said to nobody in particular,
“Great acorns! but that was exciting! One minute Glider is playing a
trick on Bobby Robin, and the next Silvertip jumps up from nowhere at
all and plays the biggest trick on Glider! Whew!”
“Well,” answered Nibble Rabbit, “I’ve just been thinking that it
doesn’t matter to me which eats which. They’re both tried to eat me
since morning.” He was still the little brown knot on his log that he
had frozen into when Silvertip came past. “Chatter, is Silvertip
looking?”
“No. He’s spread out in the sun sleeping off his meal,” answered
Chatter, craning his neck to see where Nibble was hidden. And his eyes
fairly popped when that little brown knot slipped down from the far
side of the log and limped away.
He limped—for not only was Nibble a very tired rabbit from sitting so
still, but his little mud boots that he got in the Broad Field when he
was running away from Glider were all stiff and uncomfortable. How he
did want a wash and a drink and a place to rest!
He could hear water whispering not far away, but he didn’t dare go
through the tunnels in the Prickly Ash Thicket to get to it. So he
didn’t find the brook he knew. He went farther down where it spread
out into a broad pond. It was all edged with reeds and rushes that had
some delicious watercress growing up between their roots. He could
step on the last year’s stalks which had been bent down by the Winter
Wind and keep his feet safe from the sticky mud below. Pretty soon he
found a little raft hidden in the middle of a clump of cattails.
“This is the place for me,” he said to himself. “It’s warm in the sun
and snug from the wind, and nobody’ll ever find me.” So he curled up
and went fast asleep.
He awoke to feel a shadow falling across him. He looked up into the
homeliest face he had ever seen. It was pointed, like his own, but
fatter, and it had little cropped ears and sleepy, blinky eyes, and
long yellow teeth that flashed when it said severely: “What are you
doing here?”
Poor Nibble! He was only half awake. He had forgotten where he was,
and it’s rabbit nature to jump first and think while you run. He
jumped. His feet slipped, he splashed and the water closed over his
long ears.
Then didn’t he kick and strangle! No sooner did he get his poor little
nose out than it went under again. But the second time the green water
parted and his scared eyes could see the rushes waving in the lovely
air, and his lungs could get one more breath that tasted as sweet as
clover in the spring, he felt a grip on the back of his neck. A gruff
voice growled: “Take your time. You should learn to swim.”
The next thing he knew he was being shaken very hard. “Cough!” ordered
the gruff voice. “Shake your head till you get the water out of your
ears! Now eat this!” And Nibble swallowed a peppery bite of root that
made his eyes pop, and set the tears streaming down his whiskers.
“Who are you?” he gasped.
“Doctor Muskrat, of course,” answered the voice. “You couldn’t be in
better paws.” But poor Nibble Rabbit thought he couldn’t very well be
in worse ones. Which was very ungrateful.
“I’d rather be eaten than choked to death,” he thought. “But this
awful old animal is perfectly satisfied with himself for doing it! Ah!
Oh! Uh-huh!” he coughed. And Doctor Muskrat sat back and looked more
wise and pleased than ever.
“I knew that would open your eyes,” he explained. “It was a flagroot
gnawed in the wax of the moon. You see I know what every plant in the
marsh is good for and I dry them for my medicine chest.”
“What would have happened if you hadn’t given it to me?” asked Nibble
weakly.
“I didn’t risk it,” said Doctor Muskrat, “so of course I don’t know. I
gave you the proper remedy as soon as you could swallow, so of course
you’re all right now.
“In the full of the moon
Eyes open soon.
Plucked in the wane
Eyes close again,”
he quoted. “That’s the rule for flagroot. Now I’ll put you to sleep
with the other dose if you need a rest and I’ll stay right here and
watch you.”
“Oh, no!” protested Nibble. He was just beginning to breathe and he
didn’t want any more of kind Doctor Muskrat’s medicines. “I must look
for my mother, under Hooter the Owl’s tree.”
“First,” said the doctor looking at him very severely, “you must clean
yourself up and put your fur in order. If your feet hadn’t been all
caked with mud you wouldn’t have slipped.”
“They were very uncomfortable, too,” Nibble agreed, glad that his swim
had melted his boots, at last. “I kept them on so Glider the
Blacksnake couldn’t track me.” And he told his experience with Glider
and the Fox.
“Nevertheless,” said Doctor Muskrat, “you weren’t safe because you
couldn’t keep your nose clean and smell all around you, nor your ears
clean, so you could hear. Always be sure you know everything about it
before you decide to try something new. For instance, rabbits don’t
belong in a marsh, do they?”
“No,” murmured Nibble, “But it looked so hidden and so safe.”
“So hidden,” Doctor Muskrat snorted. “It’s a mercy it was I who found
you and not Slyfoot the Mink. So safe that you nearly drowned when you
tried to get away. Now you say you want to visit the owl’s tree. Is
that any place for a rabbit? Answer me that!”
“No,” wailed Nibble. “But I want my mother and I don’t know where else
to look. If that old owl did catch her he might as well take me too.
Glider the Blacksnake ’most did, and Silvertip nearly ate me instead
of him. He might as well. Nobody cares, anyhow, if my mother’s gone.
Why didn’t you just let me drown?” Which was no way at all of thanking
Doctor Muskrat for having rescued him. And tears of sorrow mingled
with the tears that came from the awful medicine the old Doctor had
given him.
But Doctor Muskrat’s feelings weren’t hurt in the least. He could see
that poor little Nibble was badly scared and all clammy and cold from
his ducking besides. “What you need,” he said in his gruff voice,
trying to make it sound really kind, “is a nap and some light but
refreshing nourishment. What’ll it be—a fat frog? No? I forgot that
all of us don’t eat the same things. Let’s see—” He thought a minute
and Nibble could see his nose twitch as though he imagined he were
sniffing things as they came into his mind. Then he licked his lips.
“I know,” he said, and at the word his scaly tail cut the water like a
knife where it closed behind his vanishing heels.
A minute passed, two, four. What had happened to him? Nibble began to
remember how ungrateful he had been. He also remembered that Slyfoot
the Mink might be creeping up, or the Brown March Hawk peering about
as he flew by. He craned his neck and saw something floating down from
upstream as softly as a stick in the current. It was the fat old
doctor with a big root in his mouth.
[Illustration: Dr. Muskrat pulls Nibble out of the broad pond]
He slipped up beside Nibble without a sound. “I had to scour the
bottom to find this,” he explained. “It’s water chinquapin and it has
properties.”
He said this so mysteriously that Nibble dared not ask him what
“Properties” were, so he tasted a little, very carefully, to see. Did
you ever taste a water chinquapin yourself? It’s delicate and
jelly-like, but so sweet and rich that you’d risk stepping on old
Grandpop Snapping Turtle himself to get some more. Nibble scraped the
very rind of it. And then he thanked Doctor Muskrat for taking so much
trouble over him.
“Well,” growled the old doctor in a very pleased tone, “I’m glad you
have found your manners, if not your courage. Now snuggle up and go to
sleep.” And so Nibble cuddled against him in a nice warm lump to sleep
off his fullness.
He didn’t wake until the pink reflections from the setting sun were
dying out of the west and stars were already twinkling in the sky.
Doctor Muskrat was studying their reflections where they sparkled in
the pool. He was saying something to himself.
“By dusk and by dawn he shall travel alone
And all troubles are his excepting his own.”
“Is that right?” and he pricked his ears. Nibble’s own ears flew up,
but he couldn’t hear a word from those stars, dancing softly on the
water in the night wind. That was because this was deep and secret
magic.
“You awake?” asked Doctor Muskrat. “Well, that fortune was yours. I
asked the stars most particularly. They wouldn’t tell me anything
about your mother, but from the way they’re smiling I feel sure you’re
going to find her in the end. They did say that Slyfoot had gone
across the pond, so you had better hurry to the bank and find the
quail.”
Which last was strictly true and not magic at all, because the stars
had danced very hard in Slyfoot’s ripples.