As soon as Billy Bunny heard the “Star-Spangled Banner,” for that was the tune which the old organ grinder was playing, he pricked up his ears and hopped out of the Old Briar Patch, and by and by he came up to the monkey, who held out his little red cap.
“Here’s a carrot cent for you,” said the little rabbit, but the organ grinder scowled a deep, gloomy scowl and said:
“Me no lika da mun!” But what could Billy Bunny do? And as the organ grinder kept on scowling a deep, gloomy scowl, the little rabbit opened his knapsack and looked through it. And pretty soon he found an apple pie, and when the organ grinder saw it he stopped grinding the music and put out his hand.
And in a very few minutes there wasn’t any pie to be seen anywhere around for miles and miles, and the organ grinder had a lovely smile on his face! And then he played that pretty song called “In this sweet pie and pie there are apples fresh and dry,” and after that he swung the organ over his back and the monkey jumped on top and off they went to grind out more tunes for money.
But the little rabbit didn’t go with them. No, siree. For if he had to pay a whole apple pie for a tune he’d rather go another way, even if he couldn’t hear the lovely music, for you can’t grind out apple pies the way you can tunes.
Well, by and by, after a while, not so very long, he came to a river and he couldn’t get across, so he looked all about him to find a little horse; but there wasn’t any horse and there wasn’t any boat, so the little rabbit said, “Well, I guess I’ll have to float” So what did he do but find an old plank and then floated over on it to the other bank.
Now I don’t know what is the matter with my typewriter that it didn’t make a verse out of all these rhymes, but it didn’t—it just went along in a prosy way, and so you’ll have to make a poem out of them yourself, for I have no more room in this story.
STORY V—BILLY BUNNY AND MR. TOOTIE OWL
Let’s see, I left off in the last story just where Billy Bunny landed on the bank of the river. Well, now I’m going to tell you what happened after that.
“I was lucky to get across on that old board,” thought the little rabbit, as he hopped up the bank to look about him. The field was covered with daisies and in the distance a black cow stood flicking off the flies with her long tail.