And wasn't the little rabbit glad? Well, I guess he was twice over and maybe three times. And after that he said good-by and hopped away, and after he had traveled for a long, long ways he came to the field where his old friend the Scarecrow lived.
"How have you been?" asked the little rabbit, and he took a lollypop out of his knapsack and offered it to the scarecrow, but he didn't want it. "Haven't you got a cigar?" he asked. "I haven't smoked for ever so long."
"I'm sorry," said Billy Bunny. "I don't think I have any really and truly cigars. Here's a chocolate one if that will do," and he handed it to his friend the Old Clothes Man.
But the Old Clothes Man couldn't smoke it at all, although he tried the best he could, and pretty soon it began to rain and the chocolate became soft and sticky, and the little Bunny all wet, so he said: "I guess I'll crawl into a hollow stump if I can find one."
And it didn't take him long, for he hopped away to the woods nearby, and the first thing he saw was an old stump, so he hopped inside. And no sooner was he safely out of the rain than a voice said:
"What are you doing in my hollow stump;
Who are you anyway?
Why didn't you knock on this old wood block
If you really want to stay?"
And in the next story I'll tell who it was that said this.
STORY XXXVI.
BILLY BUNNY AND THE WOODCHUCK.
You remember in the last story that just as Billy Bunny hopped into the hollow stump a voice said, "What are you doing in here?"