“The next poor person I see I’m going to give my twenty-dollar bill to,” said Billy Bunny.
“Well, you’ll have plenty of chances,” said his Uncle, who of course had seen a good deal of the world and knew there were a few poor people left, although there were lots of money in banks and old stockings in farm-houses.
Now, I haven’t room to-night to tell you who Billy Bunny gave his money to, but if you’ll wait until to-morrow night you shall hear all about it—that is, unless some poor person sees Billy Bunny before I do.
STORY XIX—BILLY BUNNY AND ROBBIE REDBREAST
Well, it was two or three days before Billy Bunny came across a poor person to whom he might give his twenty-dollar bill, and then Uncle Lucky wouldn’t let him. Wasn’t that strange?
But the reason, you see, was because it was a tramp, and Uncle Lucky said: “A tramp is a man who hates work, and anybody who hates work is his own worst enemy.”
And then he told Billy Bunny that if the tramp got the twenty dollars he’d hate work even more, so Billy Bunny put the money back into his pocket and later on he gave it to his dear mother. Which, I think, was the nicest thing he could have done.
“And now, my dear nephew,” said the kind old gentleman rabbit, “let’s go back to the Old Briar Patch, for I know your mother is lonely. You have been away so long.”
And then they turned the automobile toward Old Snake Fence Corner and by and by they saw Mrs. Bunny hanging out the clothes on the line, for it was Monday morning, which is wash-day in Rabbitville, just as it is in Newport and Hoboken.
And when Mrs. Bunny saw them she was so excited that she pinned her thumb by mistake to the clothesline with a clothespin, and couldn’t get away until Uncle Lucky pulled down the clothesline and Billy Bunny pulled off the clothespin.