"Mrs. Bunny was so frightened by what I told her that it looked very much as if she would die of fright; but Sonny Bunny and I rubbed her ears hard, until we finally brought her around to that point where she was able to look danger in the face as one of our kind should, but, I am sorry to say, seldom does.
"'If you could prevent the old robber from getting in for a time, Sonny and I might be able to dig out at the other end,' she said at length, and I fancied her idea was a good one; but how it might be possible to keep Mr. Foxy Fox back was a hard question to answer.
"However, it was a case of putting my best foot forward, and I crept back down the hallway, so frightened that I had the hardest kind of work to walk straight. The murdering old scoundrel was scratching dirt at a lively rate when I came as near the front door as I dared, and it didn't take more than half an eye to see that he'd soon be able to get considerably more than his nose inside.
"Then the idea came to me that I might do a little scratching, and, turning around until my tail was pointed straight for the front door, I kept my hind feet at work till Foxy began to cough and choke at a rate that made me feel as if I were doing a pretty good job.
"'Look here, you long-eared old hopper, you! Stop kicking up so much dust, or I'll chew you into shoe-strings when I get at you!' he cried, and I knew from the sounds that he was trying to wipe the dirt from his eyes.
"'Yes, and that's what you count on doing whether I kick up a dust or not,' I said, speaking as if I were as brave and big as Senator Bear. 'If you eat rabbit stew for supper to-night, you'll have to work for it, that's what!'
"It was quite a spell before he went to work again, and I sat there ready to use my hind feet the minute he had his nose anywhere near the door, knowing all the while that Mrs. Bunny and Sonny were working for dear life at the other end of the house.
"I hadn't much more than begun to scratch gravel again when I heard the sharpest kind of a yelp from Mr. Fox, and I couldn't help laughing out loud, for I thought I'd most likely sent a stone into his eye; but I soon found out that wasn't the cause of it.
"Now what do you think had happened? Why, Mr. Man's boy Tommy's dog Towser had happened along just in the nick of time, so far as I was concerned, and dear me! how he was jumping into Mr. Foxy Fox! Talk about fighting! I never heard such a row. As I afterward learned, nearly every member of our club was awakened by the racket, and you might have searched them all without finding anything like pity for Foxy.
"We never had any love for Mr. Towser before; but now it seemed as if he were the very nicest kind of animal that ever lived. I knew Mr. Fox was bound to get the worst of it, so back I ran to tell Mrs. Bunny. When she heard the good news, instead of sitting down with me to laugh, she said real sharp-like: