Nibble’s ears flew up in surprise. “Couldn’t he smell me?” he asked. If he couldn’t, then here indeed was a new thing he had learned.
Bobby cocked his head sidewise with a most mischievous air. “He could follow you to the edge of the Clover Patch. But he lost you the minute you went out into the Broad Field. Look at your feet, Nibble. You didn’t leave any scent after you got your little mud boots.”
Nibble held up one forepaw and looked at it. Then he put out a hind one and looked at that, too. Sure enough the sticky mud of the Broad Field had matted into his fur so that he was wearing a fine little set of boots that came half way to his knees. He looked down the row of slippy, slidy tracks he had made. “There’s where I got them,” he said. “I should think Glider would see where I’d gone.”
“Glider!” laughed Bobby scornfully. “Why, Glider’s too blind and stupid to see anything. He’s nosing around on the Brush Pile right this minute, looking for the hole you didn’t run into. And the little sticks tickle his stomach, and he’s getting hungrier and hungrier and crosser and crosser until—oh, I say, Nibble, I’ve just got to go back and see the fun. Come along!” Bobby giggled a throatful of chuckling notes and flitted off, winking his tail-feathers to beckon Nibble.
But it didn’t seem like fun to Nibble. He was still so weak and shaky after his run that he trembled every time Bobby spoke Glider’s name. What he wanted was to find his mother—or at least to know that she wasn’t a little matted ball of fur under Hooter the Owl’s tree. “I’d go and look right now,” he said to himself, “if I didn’t have to pass that Brush Pile.”
Suddenly he knew that now was his chance, while he still had his little mud boots on. Softly he crept through the Clover Patch for fear Glider might be lurking in the long grass, ready to pounce on him. But long before he reached the Brush Pile itself he knew exactly where the wicked snake was. He was right on top of it.
He was right on top of it, and what is more, Bobby Robin was circling about his ugly head to jeer at him. “Yah!” Bobby was shouting, “Heap big hunter, beaten by a bunny! Better go catch frogs in a marsh!”
Now Nibble knew that was a most insulting thing to say. For a frog is so stupid that almost anything can catch him—especially a snake. If a frog can possibly dive he hides under a lily pad. If he can’t he just squawks and waits to be eaten, like a helpless baby bird.
Bobby was squawking loudly enough, only he wasn’t waiting to be eaten. He was taking very good care not to be. But he was coming so close to it that Nibble almost forgot everything else in watching him. There was one thing he did remember, though, and that was that the wicked snake had nearly caught him by sneaking up from behind. So he took proper rabbit care that no one should do that again. He found a nice log where he could see what was going on, but he didn’t hop straight up on it. He took three short little leaps past it, and one great big bound back to his perch. Since he still had on his little mud boots which had hidden his trail from Glider out in the Broad Field, he felt pretty safe. And when he crouched down like a small brown knot on the log no one seemed to notice him.
Somebody might have noticed easily enough for Bobby and Glider were making such a terrible racket that every one was coming to listen to them. The grasses were full of mice and the bushes were full of sparrows who all hated the snake. Even Chatter Squirrel, who doesn’t get on with Bobby any too well himself, came leaping across his pathway among the branches.