Bumper the White Rabbit

by George Ethelbert Walsh

"No, but he could disguise them by using pieces of white paper. I wouldn't trust him a minute."

In desperation, Bumper then added: "But look at my tail! Did a Sewer Rat or any other kind of a Rat have a tail like mine?"

"Where is it?" asked the big Bat. "I don't see any tail at all. All rabbits have white tails, and you haven't any at all."

Bumper wagged the stump of tail that he thought would convince the bats, but for a moment, he wasn't exactly sure that he saw it himself. Instead of a white, fluffy stub of a tail as soft as cotton, he saw the dirtiest, blackest wad of hair waving in the air that had ever disgraced a rabbit. The truth flashed upon his mind in an instant. What he had supposed to be the blindness of the bats was nothing more than a most natural circumstance.

He was so black with the dust and mud of the drain-pipe that it was misleading to call himself a white rabbit. He was far from it. He was as dark as any wild rabbit of the woods—darker, in fact, for there was no white fur under his stomach or around his stubby tail.

He was so confused by this discovery that he could not find his tongue to make reply. The Bats, accepting his silence as proof that his deception had been found out, suddenly beat their wings and set up a terrible uproar.

"It's the Sewer Rat in disguise!" shouted the big leader of the Bats. "Now we'll punish him! Drive him out of the sewer! Peck out his eyes!"

Bumper stopped just long enough to realize that he had no chance in a fight against all those whirring wings and little gnashing teeth. If he was to escape at all, he had to get a start on the bats. Even though flight seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bats, he turned and fled as fast as his four legs would carry him.

There was plenty of room in the sewer, and Bumper made such tremendous strides that he outdistanced all but a few of the leaders. They tried to land on his back and claw him, but he shook them off, and dodged this way and that, until the light ahead suddenly became so strong and blinding that the bats gave up the chase.

When Bumper finally came to the mouth of the sewer, he was all out of breath, but the view ahead compensated for a lot of his troubles. He could see the blue sky; green fields and waving trees, and near-by the rippling surface of a lake or river. It looked like Paradise after the darkness of the sewer; but all things that glitter, he found out, are not gold, and every earthly Paradise seems to have its serpent lurking somewhere around in the grass.