“It’s Silvertip,” said Chatter sadly. “He’s digging his way in.”
“He can’t catch us all,” answered Nibble, “unless we stay inside. We must burst out in a body, right in his face, and take our chances. Ready now—here we go!”
And at the word the snow crashed in on the tent floor and Nibble leaped through the hole, with the partridges roaring their wings behind him.
Nibble threw a frightened look over his shoulder as he ran to see if Silvertip were following. Then he stopped dead, and turned around, and sat up and took a good long look, exactly as he said he would. “That’s a Man,” he said to himself “That’s a Man, for sure and certain. What paws!”
It was Tommy Peel, in his new red mittens, who had kicked in the door with the heel of his tall rubber boots to see what was making that noise inside. And he was just about as grown-up for a Man as Nibble was for a Rabbit. And what he was doing out in the Broad Field was an awful secret.
Said Nibble to himself, “He’s not at all like a frog and he’s not like Grandpop Snappingturtle one little bit. He reminds me much more of Redwing the Blackbird.” That was because Tommy had on his dark navy-blue sweater and his new red mittens and his tall rubber boots. “That isn’t fur nor feathers nor scales he’s wearing, but it certainly isn’t skin. Nevertheless,” Nibble told himself, “he has no tail, so a man is all he can possibly be. But he hasn’t any hunger-light in his eyes. I wonder why he’s so much to be feared?”
“That’s the cunningest little bunny,” thought Tommy Peele. “I wish I could catch it and put it in a cage to play with. I believe I’ll set a trap for it.”
Now if Tommy had wanted to kill him, Nibble would have known by the way he looked. But Nibble never dreamed of a trap. That was another thing he didn’t know about. And Tommy didn’t think of killing Nibble because he was only nine years old and you have to be thirteen years old and in the eighth grade before you can have a gun.
Besides, wild things only hunt so that they can eat. But if Tommy Peele could only catch Nibble, he meant to be very good to him. He was going to give him the best of food and a fine cage. He didn’t think Nibble would be unhappy with a nice cosy place to live in. You see Tommy Peele lived in a house himself, which is a kind of a cage when you come to think about it. He didn’t think how different that was from living like a wild thing.
So the small boy and the smaller rabbit were looking at each other in a very friendly way. When all of a sudden the Wind told Nibble something. A light crunch of snow tickled his long ear and a soft whiff of scent tickled his nose. Silvertip the Fox had just jumped over the rail fence into the Clover Patch, right behind him.