"I wanted to keep the whole thing a secret, so Bobby's folks shouldn't know what a spectacle he'd been making of himself, but that didn't satisfy the foolish fellow, and he must needs up and tell Jimmy all we'd said.
"Now if you know Jimmy Hedgehog a little bit, you know he's forever trying to stir up other people so that there'll be a row, and then if there's the least bit of a chance that he may get hurt, he rolls himself up into a little ball, with all his quills sticking straight out, when even Butcher Weasel wouldn't dare to touch him. Of course it didn't take him many seconds to understand that here was the best kind of chance for getting poor Bobby into a scrape, and he said, as if he thought I was to blame for having said anything against the foolish scheme:
"'Bobby isn't the coward you are, Bunny Rabbit, and if he says he'll have fun with Mr. Towser to-night, he means it. I'd like to see one of the Coon family go back on his word. If he goes, you and I will go with him, and then we can tell all the club members how brave he is.'
"Of course this was the kind of talk to make Bobby stick to his word, though he must have begun to understand by that time how foolish he was, and if you'll believe me, I didn't dare to say straight up and down that I wouldn't have anything to do with the silly business, for fear Jimmy would be forever telling at the club that I was the worst kind of coward to be found in the big woods—which I'm free to admit privately is the fact."
Once more Mr. Bunny paused in his story-telling to gaze pensively at the ferns, which were now bending the tips of their plumes beneath the heat of the sun, and it seemed no more than right that he should have ample time in which to reflect upon Bobby Coon's folly and his own timidity.
CHAPTER XII
FOLLY, NOT BRAVERY
There was no necessity of reminding Mr. Bunny Rabbit that he had been telling a story, for, after gazing pensively at the ferns a few seconds, he continued meditatively, as if giving words to his thoughts rather than speaking to any one: