We were now living in England, in a country place—fields and woods and lanes all around. We took great pleasure in all the amusements of country life.
Our Papa had some ferrets, which he used to take out for rat-hunting in the corn stacks with a terrier we had, named Tawney, and other dogs; and now and then he went to a rabbit warren at some little distance. A boy one day brought from this warren a hat full of young rabbits for the ferrets to eat. They were all supposed to be dead; but when Papa was looking at them, he saw that one of the poor little things was alive, so he brought it into the house and gave it to me and my sister, saying that if we thought we could feed it we might keep it.
The poor little thing was so young, that it was a great chance whether we could bring it up; but we had a cook who was very fond of all animals, and she helped us to nurse it. She fed it with milk for a few days, and then it soon began to nibble at bran and vegetables, and in a week or two could eat quite as well as a full-grown rabbit.
The gardener made us a nice little house for it, by nailing some bars across the open side of an old box, and it slept in this by the side of the kitchen fire; but we never fastened it up so that it could not get out, and in the day-time it was seldom in its box, but running about the kitchen, and it soon found its way along the passage into the sitting-room, and then upstairs to the nursery, and into all the bed-rooms. It went up and down stairs quite easily, and seemed perfectly happy running about the house.
It was a very strange thing that our terrier Tawney, of whom I have much to tell afterwards, never thought of touching Bunny, for when out of doors he was most eager after any sort of animal, would run for miles after a rabbit or a hare, went perfectly crazy at the sight of a cat, and was famous for rat-hunting and all such things; but as soon as he entered the house, even if the saucy little Bunny bounded about just before his nose, he would quietly pass by, apparently without an idea that it was a thing to be hunted. In the evenings, when Tawney would lie asleep on the rug, Bunny used to run over him, sometimes nestling itself against his back or legs; then would pat his face with its fore paws, and take all manner of liberties with him, he never so much as growled or snapped at it, and seemed really to like the companionship of the poor little creature.
One very favourite hiding-place of Bunny's was behind the books on the dining-room shelves. These were quite low down to the floor, and if he could find a gap where a book was taken out, he squeezed himself in, and as the shelves were very wide, there was plenty of room for him to run about behind the books. I suppose he liked the darkness, and thought it was something like one of his native burrows, and if he could not remember them, it was his natural propensity to live in narrow dark passages, and therefore he preferred such places to the open daylight. It was very funny to see his little brown face peeping out between the books. Sometimes it happened that a book was replaced whilst Bunny was snugly hidden behind, and then we missed him when we went to put him to bed in his box for the night. First we went to look for him in all the rooms, and about the passages, and if he was not in the bookcase he would always come when we called, so when we saw nothing of the little animal, we went and took a book out of each shelf, and we were sure to see his bright eyes glistening in the dark, and then out came little Bunny with a bound. He did not seem to care for running into the garden or yard, which was odd; but as he grew older his taste for burrowing showed itself strongly.
As he used to follow the cook about everywhere, he had of course been often down to the cellar and larder. These were paved with small round stones, and there was an inner cellar, or rather a sort of receptacle for lumber of all sorts, which was not paved at all; it had a floor of earth. Old hampers and boxes were put away there, sometimes potatoes and carrots, etc., were spread on the floor there, and altogether the place had a very damp, earthy sort of smell, perhaps very like the inside of a rabbit burrow, and one day the cook came to ask Mamma to come and look at the litter Bunny had made in the cellar. We all ran down, and saw that Bunny had scratched up a quantity of earth from between the little stones with which the cellar was paved; in fact the cellar floor looked almost like a flower-bed, all earth. The door into the inner cellar happened to be shut, or most probably he would have commenced his operations where there were no stones to hinder him.
Mamma said that the gardener should press down the earth again between the stones, and tighten any that were loose, and that Bunny must not be allowed at any time to go down into the cellar. But it was very difficult to prevent his doing so. In summer, the meat and the milk were kept down there, as being the coolest place, and the beer barrels were there, and the coals, in different compartments; and to fetch all these different things somebody or other was perpetually opening the door at the top of the stairs. So Bunny frequently found opportunities for slipping in at the open door, and he came every day less and less into the sitting-rooms. One evening he had the cunning to hide himself behind some of the empty hampers in the inner cellar, and when we called him, and looked about for him in the evening, no Bunny appeared. In vain we took books out of all the shelves, hunted behind the curtains, under the sofas, and in all his usual hiding-places, we were obliged to give it up, and go to bed without finding him.
The next morning, we renewed our search, and seeing no sign of his work in the outer cellar, we determined to have a regular rummage in the inner one. After moving a great many bottles, baskets, boxes, and barrels, we found a great hole. The earth had evidently been just scratched out; for it was quite moist and fresh. The busy little fellow had made a long burrow during the night in the floor of the cellar. When he heard our voices, he came out of his newly-made retreat, and we took him up stairs and gave him some food; for he was quite ravenous after his hard work. Then we consulted with his friend the cook, how to manage about him in future. It would certainly never do to let him go on burrowing under the house; in time we should have all the walls undermined, and the house would come tumbling down upon us, burying us in the ruins. Terrible, indeed, was the catastrophe that we created in our imagination from the small foundation of Bunny's having scratched a hole in the cellar! And now that he had once tried and enjoyed the pleasures of burrowing, we could scarcely expect that he would relinquish it again.
We went to talk about it to Mamma; and we proposed that Bunny should live in the garden.