“Well,” said the Old Ground Hog, “why don’t you go down to the Wishing Pond and wish them off again?”
So the little white Rabbit went down to the Wishing Pond and he saw his face in it. Then he turned around three times, and, sure enough, his red wings were gone. Then he went home to his Mammy, who knew him right away and was so glad to see him. And he never, never wished again to be something different from what he really was.
HOW THE FIRST MAYFLOWERS
CAME.
Once upon a time everything in the woods was covered deep with snow, the berries, the juicy young bushes, and the roots. The animals had stowed themselves away for the winter to sleep; the bear in a deep cave, the chipmunk in a hollow log, and the wild mouse in a cozy hole beneath the roots of a tree. The wind sang a high, shrill song in the tops of the pine trees, and the doors of the wigwams were shut tight.
But the door of Son-of-a-Brave’s wigwam suddenly opened a little way and the Indian boy, himself, looked out. He had his bow and a newly tipped arrow in his hands.
While the snow and the ice had been piling up outside in the Indian village, Son-of-a-Brave had been very busy. He had been working beside the home fire making his new arrow head. First, he had gone to the wigwam of the village arrow maker to ask him for a good piece of stone. The arrow maker had been good enough to give Son-of-a-Brave a piece of beautiful white quartz. Then Son-of-a-Brave had set to work on it. He had shaped it with a big horn knife and chipped it with a hammer. He had polished it in a dish of sand until it shone like one of the icicles outside. Then he had fitted it to a strong arrow and wished that he had a chance to shoot. That was why Son-of-a-Brave stood at the door of the wigwam, looking out across the snow. Not even a deer had tracked it because the winter was so cold.
All at once Son-of-a-Brave saw something. An old Hare came out of a snow bank and limped down the path that led by the wigwam. In the summer the Hare was gray, the color of the trees among which he lived. But in the winter he turned white so as not to be seen by hunters when he went along through the snow. He did not care now whether any one saw him or not. He was a very old Hare, and the winter was too hard for him. He was lame and hungry and half frozen. He stopped right in front of Son-of-a-Brave and sat up on his haunches, his ears drooping.
“Don’t shoot me,” he was trying to say. “I am at your mercy, too starved to run away from you.”