WHICH GREW FAINTER AND FAINTER
Then, much to her surprise, she discovered that while she had been looking up and around, the Yellow Dog and the Laziest Beaver had vanished, and with them the tumble-down beaver house and the meadow and the little river. She was in the deep wood again, sitting on the fallen trunk of a great pine-tree, and watching a rabbit, who, apparently unconscious of her presence, was regarding himself in a small hand-glass, while he wabbled and wabbled and wabbled his nose.
CHAPTER IV
“WHY DOES A RABBIT WABBLE HIS NOSE?”
How Buddie came to be whisked away from Beavertown to a part of the wood that, so far as she could tell, she had never seen before, remains to this day a mystery.
“It was the echo,” she said, in telling me the tale; “you just couldn’t help looking up.” Certainly it must have been a remarkable echo; and although it does not explain the matter entirely to my satisfaction, it is as convincing as any explanation I can offer. But, to go on with the story:
The Rabbit continued to regard himself in his mirror, wabbling his nose the while, until Buddie wondered whether he intended to keep it up all day. But at last he dropped the glass, which was suspended on a cord about his neck, and remarked, with a little sigh:
“It’s no use. I can’t make it out.”
Buddie feared to move lest she send him scampering off; rabbits were such timid creatures—that is, all the rabbits she had ever come upon before. Still, she wished to talk with him about his funny nose; so she coughed softly to attract his attention. This is an old trick and usually succeeds. The Rabbit turned his head, saw Buddie and exclaimed hurriedly, with a friendly smile:
“Don’t be alarmed, my dear!”