"Old Mrs. Muskrat jumped into the river,
Splasherty, splasherty, splash!
And little boy rabbit jumped into the box,
That held her best bonnet and trampled upon it.
Masherty, masherty, mash!"
And in the next story you shall know what the miller's dog did when he stopped singing, that is, if Robbie Redbreast isn't too frightened to look into the window and tell me all about it.
STORY XXXV.
BILLY BUNNY AND THE MILLER'S DOG.
After the Miller's Dog stopped singing, as I told you in the story before this, he poked his nose into the hat box where Billy Bunny had hidden himself and said in a deep, growly voice:
"Come out of there or I will growl and bite the bonnet
That Mrs. Muskrat wears for best
And the purple flowers on it.
And then she'll think it's you who did
This dreadful unkind deed,
And never speak to you again
Or you with cookies feed."
"Goodness me, but you are a very poor sort of a poet," said the little rabbit, peeping out of the hat box. "Your poetry is dreadful," and this made the Miller's Dog so ashamed of himself that he couldn't wag his tail or even bark.
No, sir. He couldn't do a thing but slink out of the door and close it so softly that it didn't pinch his tail hardly at all.
"Ha! ha!" laughed the little rabbit. "Did you ever see such a silly dog?" And neither did I and neither did you, I know.
Well, after a little while, Mrs. Jenny Eva Muskrat carne up the back stairs from the river, where she had gone in the last story, you remember, and wasn't she glad that nothing more had happened? "If you had jumped into that other hat box," she said, "you would have spoilt my next year's Easter bonnet, and that would have been too dreadful for anything."