And neither of them knew that the other was anywhere around!
But there was one thing that they knew quite well: the water was almost colder than they could bear, at first. If their feet hadn't grown numb, after a time, so that there was no feeling in them at all, they wouldn't have been able to stand there so still and so long.
They both wondered where Jimmy Rab[p. 111]bit was, and what he was doing, and why he didn't come back.
But Jimmy Rabbit was waiting for something. As he had told Reddy Woodpecker, everything depended on the weather. Though the air was becoming sharper every minute, it was not yet cold enough to suit Jimmy Rabbit. What he wanted was freezing weather. And at last he was satisfied. When the sun hid itself behind a bank of clouds the ground began to stiffen with frost, which covered all the puddles and pools with a coating of ice.
It was almost dark when Jimmy Rabbit left the shelter of his bush and danced up and down to get warm. Soon he came with a hop, skip and a jump to the big cedar tree.
"How are you?" he called.
And two very sulky voices answered:
"I'm cold—that's how I am!"