“Lost them? Eaten them, you mean, because you would always go and stare at it,” said Tom. “Where’s the leveret? Oh! I see. Now, look out!”
A moment later and I was in darkness. Tom had thrown himself upon the top of me and was grabbing at me with his hands. I nearly got away, but as my head poked up under his arm the girl caught hold of it.
“Oh! it’s scratching,” she cried, as indeed I was with all my might. “Hold it, Tom, hold it!”
“Hold it yourself,” said Tom, “my face is full of furze prickles.” So she held and presently he helped her, till in the end I was tied up in a pocket-handkerchief and carried I knew not whither. Indeed I was almost mad with fear.
When I came to myself I found that I was within a kind of wire run which smelt foully, as though hundreds of things had lived in it for years. There was a hutch at the end of the run in which sat an enormous she-rabbit, quite as big as my mother, a fierce-looking brute with long yellow teeth. I was afraid of that rabbit and got as far from it as I could. Presently it hopped out and looked at me.
“What are you doing here?” it asked. “Can’t you talk? Well, it doesn’t matter. If I get hungry I’ll eat you! Do you hear that? I’ll eat you, as I did all the others,” and it showed its big yellow teeth and hopped back into the hutch.
After that Tom and the girl came and gave us plenty of food which the big rabbit ate, for I could touch nothing. For two days they came, and then I think they forgot all about us. I grew very hungry, and at night filled myself with some of the remaining food, such as stale cabbage leaves. By next morning all was gone, and the big rabbit grew hungry also. All that day it hopped about sniffing at me and showing its yellow teeth.
“I shall eat you to-night,” it said.
I ran round and round the pen in terror, till at last I found a place where rats had been working under the wire, almost big enough for me to squeeze through, but not quite.
The sun went down and the big she-rabbit came out.