HOW A BUNNY COULD HELP A BOY
Now don’t you forget that it was the greedy Red Cow who let Nibble out
of his cage. She wanted his carrot so much that she pulled the wire
door right off with her horn. And then she got scared and careered way
down the Snowy Pasture with that door banging against her nose,
getting madder and madder and madder.
Well, she finally scratched it off on to a prickly thorn bush that
held up its arms to help her. And then she came back to the barnyard
as fast as she could run. For she’d lost her temper entirely. And you
know what happens when things do that. It happened to the Storm and to
Mrs. Hooter, and to Silvertip the Fox, and to Chatter Squirrel, and
Slyfoot the Mink, and Nature only knows how many more. It’s always
something unpleasant.
[Illustration: Just then Watch barked to Tommy Peele, “Here he is. I’ve
got him.”]
But she hadn’t forgotten that carrot, because she was so terribly
greedy. She galloped up and sclooped her tongue around beneath the
pile of hay in Nibble’s cage. No, there weren’t any more carrots at
all. So she rolled her eyes around and saw Nibble just finishing up
the sweet inside of it. “Moo-oo-oo!” she roared. And it didn’t sound a
bit like the White Cow’s fluty voice. Moo! She tried to catch Nibble
on her sharp horns or trample him with her big hard toes. But he was
too quick. He just made two jumps and ran under the haystack.
Then she shook her horns at Chirp Sparrow, who was perched on a fence
post. “You lied!” she roared. “You said there were lots of carrots
here!” But Chirp just squawked rudely and flew into a tree, and she
only banged her sore nose on the fence wire.
So the next one she took after was Tommy Peele, who hadn’t done
anything to her at all. And you remember Tommy had on his tall rubber
boots, so he couldn’t run very fast. Not fast enough to run away from
the Red Cow.
And suddenly Nibble found he was dreadfully afraid of what might
happen to Tommy Peele. Besides, it was all his own fault—excepting
that Chirp really oughtn’t to have lied to her. So he bounced out
under her very nose, calling: “I took the carrot! I took the carrot!”
But the Red Cow wanted someone she could catch and hurt—because she
had lost her temper. She wanted Tommy Peele. Only she never got him.
Because right then things did begin to happen. Watch dropped that rat
and clamped his teeth right on her sore nose. “There!” he growled in
his throat. “I’ll teach you to hurt my little boy!”
“I’ll hurt you!” bawled the Red Cow, trying to stamp in his ribs with
her big horny feet.
“You will?” It was the White Cow’s voice—but it wasn’t fluty now. She
was galloping, tail up and head down. “Whang!” she hit the Red Cow’s
ribs. “Blam!” she hit her so hard in the shoulder that Watch lost his
hold. And the Red Cow was all through hurting any one. She turned and
ran, limping and licking her sore nose.
Maybe you think Nibble Rabbit wasn’t puzzled when he saw the Red Cow
run bawling down the pasture with a limp that would keep her feeding
in circles for a week. He had thought of course she was going to fight
with Watch the Dog, and instead she had turned on Tommy Peele. Now
that was wrong, so Watch had a perfect right to stop her. But, when
the White Cow came charging up, Nibble never in the world expected to
see her help Watch give the Bed Cow a terrible trouncing.
And here was Watch, all smiles and waggly tail, saying, “Much obliged,
I’m sure, Mother Snowflake. I was finding that heifer quite a
mouthful.”
And the White Cow was answering, “Oh, I’ve been waiting quite a while
to drive a bit of sense into the wild little thing.” And she settled
down to switching her tail and chewing her cud as calmly as ever.
But that made Nibble indignant. “She’s not a Wild Thing,” he said.
“Wild Things have better manners than any of you or they’d be fighting
all the time. I’m a Wild Thing myself, so I know.”
“Oh, it’s the Bunny,” drawled the White Cow, dragging her words the
way she drags her toes, because she thinks as slowly as she walks.
“Well, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You’re perfectly right.
Manners are to keep folks from fighting—to make them think before they
pick a quarrel. That Red Cow just wouldn’t think until we made her.
Now she’ll learn.”
“’Nother thing,” Nibble insisted, “we don’t help any one against our
own kind.”
“That sort of talk is less use than a trampled cornstalk,” Mother
Snowflake lowed sensibly. “All the kind we have here is Tommy Peele.
His people take care of us, so we take care of him.”
“Yes,” Watch put in; “you saw how he trusted us.” And he waved his
tail quite grandly.
“But he didn’t say ‘Thank you,’” Nibble looked about him in surprise,
for Tommy had disappeared.
“He doesn’t keep it in his pocket, but he won’t forget it,” promised
the Cow. And she wet her nostrils with her slaty tongue to sniff what
it was going to be.
“He doesn’t talk our talk,” Watch explained, “but he does know the
sign language of tails pretty well.”
“I told you,” she mooed triumphantly. For there came Tommy with his
cap full of meal. He poured a big pile before her and a little one
close to Nibble. But he gave Watch a great big hug.
“That little ‘thank you’ is for you,” smiled Watch over Tommy Peele’s
shoulder. “Why, Bunny, do you think we didn’t see you trying to help
us with the Red Cow?”
Nibble certainly had tried his best, for deep down inside him he began
to know why the tame beasts all loved Tommy.
Still he hesitated. “I won’t come back to my cage,” he warned; “I’m
wild, you know.”
“That’s all right,” Watch promised, “but wild or tame, you’re Tommy
Peele’s, and some day you’ll be glad to know it. So go ahead and
accept that ‘thank you’ like a sensible beast or you’ll be hurting
Tommy’s feelings.”
Nibble really wanted to. My, but it smelled good! And the White Cow
was heaving big sighs of happiness over her pile. But he didn’t want
to be caught again, so he was very, very careful. Lip-it, lip-it, he
tiptoed over and sniffed. Then he just couldn’t resist it. It WAS
good! Quite as good as it smelled! Pretty soon he felt like sighing,
too, because his little skin was tight.
And Tommy Peele never tried to catch him at all. Because now he knew
what it felt like to be chased. He only took off his red mitten and
twiddled his pinky fingers.
Nibble knew that those fingers were nice and gentle when they petted
him, and that was all Tommy wanted to do. But he just couldn’t quite
dare to let him. So he cleaned the last crumb off his whiskers with
the little fur brushes he wears on his paws and said, “That was mighty
nice, but I’m a Wild Thing still, and I’m going back to the woods,
where I belong. Good-bye, Mr. Watch. Good-bye, Mother Snowflake” [for
that’s what Watch had called the White Cow].
“Good-bye,” barked Watch. “You’ll find us here any time you want us.”
Mother Snowflake couldn’t stop to talk. She was too busy.
So Nibble signalled a very polite “Good-bye” to Tommy Peele with his
little tufty tail, though it was still rather stiff where Ouphe the
Rat had bitten it. But Tommy didn’t understand Nibble—not yet. He only
knew the talk of the tame beasts. So he felt quite sad when he saw the
Bunny go skipping, lipity, lipity, down the long lane.