"What I think, Baby Bunty?" repeated Mr. Longears, smiling down one side of his pink, twinkling nose. "Well, I think lots of things, my little rabbit girl. But if you think I'm going to play tag with you this morning you are wrong. I haven't time!"
"Oh, I don't want you to play tag!" exclaimed Baby Bunty, though she was such a lively little tyke that she nearly always wanted Uncle Wiggily to play a game of some sort. "But there's something over in the woods," she went on. "What you think it is?" and she was quite excited.
"Something over in the woods, Baby Bunty?" asked Uncle Wiggily, as he looked at one of his carrots to see if the point needed sharpening; but it didn't, I'm glad to say. "Well, what's in the woods, Baby Bunty; the Fox, the Skeezicks or the Pipsisewah?"
"Neither one, Uncle Wiggily," answered the little rabbit girl. "But there's a lot of those funny animals you call 'boys,' and they're making a snow house, and maybe they'll try to catch you, or me or Nurse Jane," and Baby Bunty looked quite worried.
"A snow house this time of year! Tut! Tut! Nonsense!" laughed Uncle Wiggily. "This is summer and there isn't any snow with which to make houses."
"Well, these boys, in the woods, are making a white house, anyhow, Uncle Wiggily," spoke the little rabbit girl, who once had lived in a hollow stump, before she came to visit the bunny gentleman. "It's a white house, and there's a lot of boys, and they're cutting down wood, and making a fire and boiling a kettle of water and oh, they're doing lots of things! I thought I'd better come and tell you."
"Hum!" said Uncle Wiggily, straightening up to rest his back, which ached from pulling the weeds out of his garden. "Yes, perhaps it is a good thing you told me, Baby Bunty. I'll go have a look at the white house the boys are putting up."
Uncle Wiggily and Baby Bunty hopped through the woods, and soon they were near that side of the forest nearest the village where real boys and girls lived. Through the green trees gleamed something white, on which the sun shone as brightly as it does at the seashore.
"There's the house," said Baby Bunty, pointing with her paw off among the trees.
"Ho! That isn't exactly a house!" Uncle Wiggily told the little rabbit girl. "That's a white tent, and those boys must be camping there. Boys like to come to the woods to camp in the summer. We'll hop a little closer and listen. Then we can tell what they are doing."