“Look here, young rabbit,” he said with a scowl, “don’t you ever again shout in my ear! If you do I’ll pin back both your ears with a pine needle and send you home to your mother!” Wasn’t that a dreadful thing for him to say?
Well, sir, after that Billy Bunny thought it was time to be going, so he bowed to the old squirrel and hopped away, and after maybe a million hops, skips and jumps, he reached the Old Brier Patch, where he found his dear mother standing in the doorway of her little house waiting for her bunny boy.
And that’s a good place to leave him for to-night, don’t you think so? For we’ll know he’s safe and sound with his own dear mother, so go to sleep and to-morrow I’ll tell you another story; yes, I will, if you are good.
STORY XXXIV—BILLY BUNNY AND DICKEY MEADOW MOUSE
Ting-a-ling! went the rising bell, and Billy Bunny opened his left eye and twinkled his nose and stretched his right hind leg, and then he was wide awake.
But before he got out of bed he pulled out his gold watch and chain, the watch which his kind Uncle Lucky Lefthindfoot had given him, you remember, from under his pillow, for he was so sleepy he wondered if his mother hadn’t made a mistake. But, no, she hadn’t.
It was half past fourteen o’clock and Mr. Happy Sun was laughing through the little window. So up jumped Billy Bunny and combed his fur and parted it in the middle down his back, and after that he was almost ready for breakfast, except to brush his teeth with a new toothbrush which he had bought at the Three-in-one-cent store.
After breakfast he started right out to play on the Pleasant Meadow, and the first person he saw was little Dickey Meadow Mouse. He had just come out of his little grass ball house and was looking around to see what he would do.
“Good morning,” said Billy Bunny, “how are you this lovely day?”
And of course Dickey Meadow Mouse said he was well, for the little people of the Pleasant Meadow are never ill unless some enemy injures them, for they know how to take very good care of themselves, you know, and kind Mother Nature always provides them with enough to eat, and sometimes more.