“It isn’t water chinquapin,” he found time to say, “but it’s quite as good. And this place seems nice and safe. I don’t think even Silvertip the Fox could catch us.”
“Hush!” said the mouse. “I think I hear that awful beast every time you speak of him.”
But Nibble was too busy making up for lost time even to listen.
Up crept Tommy Peele with his eyes on the place where Nibble crawled in. At last he got his hand over it. Then he hit the box on the other side.
Then didn’t those foolish little beasts who were feasting on his carrot sit up and listen? And didn’t they start to run? But there wasn’t any place to run to! For Nibble finally found his hole—with Tommy Peele’s red mitten in it. And his poor little heart began to beat like mad. “Mice,” he whispered, “it’s that Man!”
So they huddled up into a miserable little heap in the very middle of that soap box and waited. And Tommy waited, too.
But they kept so very still he said to himself, “I wonder if that bunny’s got out on the other side.” So he looked all around, and of course he saw there were no fresh tracks in the snow. Then he pulled off one of his mittens and reached in to feel.
And his hand found Nibble’s soft, warm fur. And his fingers hunted for Nibble’s floppy ears. But they just happened to touch the nose of that Lady Mouse.
“Ow, ow, ow-w-w! Leggo!” shouted Tommy. And trap and sticks and rabbit and mice went whirling. And Tommy danced up and down in his tall rubber boots.
In the whole world you could not have found a more frightened bunny than Nibble when Tommy Peele held him up by his long ears and started toward the barn. I wish I could tell you right now what happened to him then, but, bless me, so many things happened that this book simply will not hold them. It is all written down, though, and if you want to know how he made friends with the Red Cow and how he learned about Tad Coon and how he learned about many other things you can read about every bit of it in the other books about Nibble and his friends. ’Cause that Lady Mouse had bitten him.