This didn't frighten the girl a bit, and she laughed in the nurse's face; but it gave Bumper such a shock that he missed three heart beats and one of his whiskers, for he knew Carlo was the dog he had heard barking all night long.
STORY VI
BUMPER AND CARLO
The little white rabbit found a home already waiting for him in the prettiest corner of the garden, but before that the red-haired girl harnessed him to a ribbon, and let him eat grass and vegetables to his heart's content wherever he took a fancy to go. Edith lost her appetite apparently in watching her pet eat, for she wouldn't go into breakfast even after the nurse had called her several times; but finally, when her mother came out, and took her by the hand, she obeyed.
"Can't I take the rabbit in with me?" she asked.
"No, dear, put him in the pen over there. He'll be quite content alone."
So Bumper found himself alone in the garden, or rather in a pen shut off from the rest of the garden by stout chicken wire. There was a box in back of the pen, filled with soft grass and straw, and a tin pan filled with fresh water. There was such a variety of things to eat that he kept nibbling first a carrot, then a cabbage, then a blade of grass, then some corn, then a piece of bread, then some crackers, then a red beet, then a spear of grass again, and so on through all the long list of good things.
It was such a mixture that he was never sure just what he had in his mouth. It was just as if a boy or girl had crammed the mouth full of gum drops, chocolates, fudge, lollypops, taffy, peppermint, lemon and wintergreen drops, and a few pieces of fruit cake by way of change. How could he or she tell just what the teeth were munching on?
Bumper tasted them all, and thought that each one was sweeter and better than the other; but when he got around to the end of his circle he had to begin all over again to see if they didn't all taste better the second time. My, it was a feast that made his eyes open and his stomach swell like a toad's trying to swallow a gnat.