Eyes close again,”
he quoted. “That’s the rule for flagroot. Now I’ll put you to sleep with the other dose if you need a rest and I’ll stay right here and watch you.”
“Oh, no!” protested Nibble. He was just beginning to breathe and he didn’t want any more of kind Doctor Muskrat’s medicines. “I must look for my mother, under Hooter the Owl’s tree.”
“First,” said the doctor looking at him very severely, “you must clean yourself up and put your fur in order. If your feet hadn’t been all caked with mud you wouldn’t have slipped.”
“They were very uncomfortable, too,” Nibble agreed, glad that his swim had melted his boots, at last. “I kept them on so Glider the Blacksnake couldn’t track me.” And he told his experience with Glider and the Fox.
“Nevertheless,” said Doctor Muskrat, “you weren’t safe because you couldn’t keep your nose clean and smell all around you, nor your ears clean, so you could hear. Always be sure you know everything about it before you decide to try something new. For instance, rabbits don’t belong in a marsh, do they?”
“No,” murmured Nibble, “But it looked so hidden and so safe.”
“So hidden,” Doctor Muskrat snorted. “It’s a mercy it was I who found you and not Slyfoot the Mink. So safe that you nearly drowned when you tried to get away. Now you say you want to visit the owl’s tree. Is that any place for a rabbit? Answer me that!”
“No,” wailed Nibble. “But I want my mother and I don’t know where else to look. If that old owl did catch her he might as well take me too. Glider the Blacksnake ’most did, and Silvertip nearly ate me instead of him. He might as well. Nobody cares, anyhow, if my mother’s gone. Why didn’t you just let me drown?” Which was no way at all of thanking Doctor Muskrat for having rescued him. And tears of sorrow mingled with the tears that came from the awful medicine the old Doctor had given him.
But Doctor Muskrat’s feelings weren’t hurt in the least. He could see that poor little Nibble was badly scared and all clammy and cold from his ducking besides. “What you need,” he said in his gruff voice, trying to make it sound really kind, “is a nap and some light but refreshing nourishment. What’ll it be—a fat frog? No? I forgot that all of us don’t eat the same things. Let’s see—” He thought a minute and Nibble could see his nose twitch as though he imagined he were sniffing things as they came into his mind. Then he licked his lips. “I know,” he said, and at the word his scaly tail cut the water like a knife where it closed behind his vanishing heels.