“Come along, Nibble, come quick,” pleaded Chirp Sparrow. He meant that the dog was safer than the rat. But Ouphe thought he meant that the dog was gone. So he let Nibble pull him to the very edge of the hole.
“Aurgh!” sang Watch, very joyfully indeed. For he never touched Nibble at all, but nipped Ouphe the Rat right through the heart with those very long teeth he shows when he laughs.
Nibble sat right down there in the sunlight until he got his breath, and nobody tried to catch him.
Watch couldn’t. He had his mouth all full of Ouphe. And he was walking around on the tips of his toes, looking so vain that all the sparrows laughed at him. Even Tommy Peele joined in. But Watch didn’t care a bit. He just smiled as wide as he could let his mouth go and not lose Ouphe out of it.
And Nibble slipped over and ate his carrot. How good it tasted, now he was free!
CHAPTER VII
HOW A BUNNY COULD HELP A BOY
Now don’t you forget that it was the greedy Red Cow who let Nibble out of his cage. She wanted his carrot so much that she pulled the wire door right off with her horn. And then she got scared and careered way down the Snowy Pasture with that door banging against her nose, getting madder and madder and madder.
Well, she finally scratched it off on to a prickly thorn bush that held up its arms to help her. And then she came back to the barnyard as fast as she could run. For she’d lost her temper entirely. And you know what happens when things do that. It happened to the Storm and to Mrs. Hooter, and to Silvertip the Fox, and to Chatter Squirrel, and Slyfoot the Mink, and Nature only knows how many more. It’s always something unpleasant.
Just then Watch barked to Tommy Peele, “Here he is. I’ve got him.”