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.

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.