XI
Jimmy Rabbit is too Late
It was just as Jimmy Rabbit had said. You remember that as he stood behind Frisky Squirrel’s back with his mother’s big shears, all ready to cut off Frisky’s tail, he had told Frisky that “it would all be over in a jiffy”?
Well, it was. But things didn’t happen just as Jimmy Rabbit had expected. He had taken a good, firm grip on the shears, and he was just about to shut them upon Frisky’s tail with a snap, when somebody called Frisky’s name. Frisky knew who it was right away. It was his mother! And like most of us, when our mothers catch us doing something we ought not to do, Frisky was so surprised and so startled that he gave a great jump.
That jump was all that saved Frisky’s tail. For just as Mrs. Squirrel called, Jimmy Rabbit shut the shears together as hard as he could. But Jimmy was too late. When Frisky jumped, his tail followed him, of course. It whisked out from between the shears; and they closed upon nothing at all.
“Now, that’s too bad!” Jimmy exclaimed. He had been so interested in what he was doing that he had never heard Mrs. Squirrel at all. “Come back here and we’ll try again.”
The words were scarcely out of Jimmy Rabbit’s mouth when he received a terrific box on the ear. Now, it’s bad enough for anybody to have his ears boxed. But Jimmy’s ears were so big that I dare say it hurt him three times as much as it would have hurt anyone else. And it surprised him, too. For he hadn’t heard Mrs. Squirrel as she stole up behind him. Anyhow, he ran off howling, taking his mother’s shears with him.
“That awful Rabbit boy!” Mrs. Squirrel said. “A moment more and he would have cut off your beautiful tail—your best feature, too!”
“What’s a feature, Mother?” Frisky asked.