As soon as Tommy Fox began to dance with the strange lady (she was really Fatty Coon, you know), he saw very quickly that she was not a good dancer at all. She kept stepping on Tommy's feet, and tripping him. And Tommy kept wishing that the music would begin, so he could stop dancing. You remember that Jimmy Rabbit had said that this was to be a dance without music, and that everybody had to be blindfolded, too.
At first, Tommy Fox and his partner kept bumping into other dancers. That was natural enough, too, because how[p. 102] could anyone see, with a pocket-handkerchief tied over his eyes?
After a while Tommy noticed that they bumped into fewer and fewer people, until at last they never ran into any others at all. But he never stopped to wonder at that. He was only glad that it was so.
Being blindfolded, he had not seen what was going on. But Jimmy Rabbit was very busy. He kept going up to all the rabbit dancers, and whispering to them, and telling them to take their pocket-handkerchiefs off their eyes and run away, because Tommy Fox and Fatty Coon had come to the Rabbits' Ball, without being invited. So two by two the dancers stole off, until there were only three of the merrymakers left. Two of those were Tommy Fox and Fatty Coon, who were still dancing, still blindfolded, and each still thinking that the other was a rabbit. The third[p. 103] was Jimmy Rabbit himself. But he was not dancing. He was peeping out from behind a tree, and wondering what was going to happen.
And all the time Tommy Fox was wishing the music would begin. Of course, he didn't know that Jimmy Rabbit had sent the fiddlers away.
Now, the longer they danced, the oftener the fat lady stepped on Tommy's feet. And he grew so angry that he finally said: