[V]
NIMBLE'S MISTAKE
One morning Nimble's mother said to him, "To-night, just as the moon rises, we'll start for Farmer Green's garden patch."
He knew what that meant. It meant that he was going to know, at last, what carrots tasted like. And he was delighted.
"You've improved fast," his mother told him. "You've grown a good deal. You start to run much more quickly than you did a month ago; and you're quite speedy now. I must say that you don't mind me any too well. Take care that to-night you do exactly as you're ordered!"
Nimble promised. "I'll be good," he said. "No matter how many carrots you want me to eat, I'll finish every one."
"No matter if you haven't had a chance to eat a single carrot, if I tell you to run you must obey instantly," his mother warned him. "Two seconds' delay might be fatal," she added solemnly. "If we hear a twig snap you mustn't stop to look nor listen."
"Yes!" said Nimble. But ten minutes later he couldn't have repeated a word that his mother said—except that they were going to start for the garden when the moon rose. That much he told Jimmy Rabbit when he met him in the woods a little while afterward. And Jimmy Rabbit agreed to get the news, somehow, to Fatty Coon and Cuffy Bear.