“Oh, we had a dreadful time the other day,” went on Little Jack Rabbit. “Hungry Hawk almost pushed in through the kitchen door. If Uncle Lucky hadn’t slammed it on his hooked beak, making him fast, I don’t believe the Policeman Dog could have caught him.”
“You don’t say so,” exclaimed Timmie Meadowmouse.
“Yes, I do,” answered the little bunny boy. “And pretty soon after we had tied the door tight so that the old hawk couldn’t pull away his beak, the Policeman Dog arrived and arrested him. Now he’s in the jail house in Rabbitville.”
“Then I shall have some peace for a while,” laughed the timid little meadowmouse. “Oh, I’m so glad!” and he skipped over the meadow and after him hopped the little bunny boy. By and by, after a while, but not nearly a mile, they came to the Old Rail Fence, on the top of which sat Chippy Chipmunk in his striped fur jacket.
“What makes you two fellows so frisky?” he asked.
“Oh, just because we’re happy,” answered the little meadowmouse.
“That’s it,” laughed Little Jack Rabbit. “When you’re happy your feet just skiptoe over the ground. You almost think you’re flying.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” said a voice, all of a sudden, just like that.
Dear me, I suppose I should have kept you from worrying by telling you right off whose voice it was that shouted “Stuff and nonsense!”
It was Grandmother Magpie’s. That’s whose voice it was. And the old lady blackbird looked most forbidding, let me tell you. Oh, yes, she did, and no mistake about it.