“Well,” the hare said, “I was glad to escape, of course, and so would you have been. But yet I could not help feeling sorry for the poor dogs, because they had been taught to chase me, and it was not their fault. Do you know who I should have liked to see fall over the cliffs instead of them?”
“Who?” said Tommy Smith.
“The cruel, hard-hearted men who taught them,” said the hare. “It is they who ought to have been drowned, and I am very sorry that they were not.”
“You poor hare!” said Tommy Smith, as he stroked its soft fur, and played with its long, pretty ears. “It is very hard that you should always be hunted, and I do think that you are very badly treated. But what clever ways you have of escaping! Do you know, I think you are the cleverest animal I have had a talk with yet, and I like you very much.”
“Ah! it is all very well to say that now,” said the hare. “But who was it that threw a stick at me?”
“I never will again,” said Tommy Smith. “You know you jumped up all of a sudden, so that I had no time to think. But I did not come out on purpose to throw it at you. I only wanted to find a lark’s nest, so as to get the eggs.”
When the hare heard that, I cannot tell you how sad and grieved he looked. “What!” he said. “Would you take the poor lark’s eggs away, and make it unhappy? No, no; if you really like me, as you say you do, you must promise me not to do anything so cruel as that. The lark is the best friend I have. He sings to me as I lie in my form, and consoles me for all my troubles. His voice cheers me too, when I am being chased by the dogs, for he always seems to be saying, ‘You will get away; I know you will get away.’ Then sometimes he comes down to roost quite close to me, and we talk to each other. He tells me what it is like up above the clouds, and I tell him all that has been going on down here. He has his trials too, for there are hawks that try to catch him, just as there are greyhounds that try to catch me; so we sit and comfort each other. Promise me never to be unkind to my friend the lark.”
“I won’t hurt him,” said Tommy Smith. “And if ever I find his nest with eggs in it, I will only just look at them and leave them there.”
“Oh, thank you,” the hare said; “and you won’t hurt me either?”
“No, indeed, I won’t,” said Tommy Smith. “Do you know, I begin to think that it would be better not to hurt any animal.”