PETER RABBIT was in trouble. He had gotten into mischief and now,
like every one who gets into mischief, he wished that he hadn’t. The
worst of it was that he was a long way from his home in the dear Old
Briar-patch, and he didn’t know how he ever could get back there again.
Where was he? Why, in the stone wall on one side of Farmer Brown’s
young peach orchard. How Peter blessed the old stone wall in which he
had found a safe hiding-place! Bowser had hung around nearly all night,
so that Peter had not dared to try to go home. Now it was daylight,
and Peter knew it would not be safe to put his nose outside.
Peter was worried, so worried that he couldn’t go to sleep as he
usually does in the daytime. So he sat hidden in the old wall and
waited and watched. By and by he saw Farmer Brown and Farmer Brown’s
boy come out into the orchard. Right away they saw the mischief which
Peter had done, and he could tell by the sound of their voices that
they were very, very angry. They went away, but before long they were
back again, and all day long Peter watched them work putting something
around each of the young peach-trees. Peter grew so curious that he
forgot all about his troubles and how far away from home he was. He
could hardly wait for night to come so that he might see what they had
been doing.
Just as jolly, round, red Mr. Sun started to go to bed behind the
Purple Hills, Farmer Brown and his boy started back to the house.
Farmer Brown was smiling now.
“I guess that that will fix him!” he said.
“Now what does he mean by that?” thought Peter. “Who will it fix? Can
it be me? I don’t need any fixing.”
He waited just as long as he could. When all was still, and the
moonlight had begun to make shadows of the trees on the snow, Peter
very cautiously crept out of his hiding-place. Bowser the Hound was
nowhere in sight, and everything was as quiet and peaceful as it had
been when he first came into the orchard the night before. Peter had
fully made up his mind to go straight home as fast as his long legs
would take him, but his dreadful curiosity insisted that first he must
find out what Farmer Brown and his boy had been doing to the young
peach-trees.
So Peter hurried over to the nearest tree. All around the trunk of
the tree, from the ground clear up higher than Peter could reach, was
wrapped wire netting. Peter couldn’t get so much as a nibble of the
delicious bark. He hadn’t intended to take any, for he had meant to go
right straight home, but now that he couldn’t get any, he wanted some
more than ever,—just a bite. Peter looked around. Everything was quiet.
He would try the next tree, and then he would go home.
But the next tree was wrapped with wire. Peter hesitated, looked
around, turned to go home, thought of how good that bark had tasted the
night before, hesitated again, and then hurried over to the third tree.
It was protected just like the others. Then Peter forgot all about
going home. He wanted some of that delicious bark, and he ran from one
tree to another as fast as he could go.
At last, way down at the end of the orchard, Peter found a tree
that had no wire around it. “They must have forgotten this one!” he
thought, and his eyes sparkled. All around on the snow were a lot of
little, shiny wires, but Peter didn’t notice them. All he saw was that
delicious bark on the young peach-tree. He hopped right into the middle
of the wires, and then, just as he reached up to take the first bite of
bark, he felt something tugging at one of his hind legs.