But that bad bunny didn’t jump at all. She just cuddled down and murmured: “It’s nice and warm in here. It’s comfortable.” And when Tommy tickled her nose with the tender end of a grass-blade she ate it. That most made the others envious.
But Tommy’s father had been watching Silk-ears. “The mother rabbit is so scared!” he said. “And she’s right. It’s nice to have them friendly, but suppose they trusted somebody else like that, maybe Louie Thomson. He might hurt them. And then it would be all your fault. Better let it go.” So Tommy did. And Silk-ears was mighty glad to get it back again.
Tommy’s father was perfectly right. The bunny didn’t mind a bit; she thought Tommy’s hand was a fine place to hide in, all soft and warm and comfortable. But somebody else mightn’t be so gentle with her. The only safety for wild things is to stay wild and be very, very careful. And yet, there are two sides to being scary; you’ll find that out when we come to it.
Silk-ears thought exactly the same way. She said: “It’s all right for you, Nibble, to be friendly with that Boy, because you’re a great big grown-up rabbit and you know just who you can trust and who you can’t, but something terrible will surely happen to that baby. If she wants to hide, she must learn to find herself a nice safe place in the grasses--she mustn’t just scrouch down into any little hollow and think if she keeps still nobody will see her. I wish Tommy Peele had given her a good shaking, I do! Then she’d have learned better.”
But you see, Tommy hadn’t. She wasn’t a bit scared; indeed, she was quite vain because she’d done something none of the others had dared to do. And she was all ready to do it again. She couldn’t see what her mother was making such a fuss about.
“That’s a regular hop-toad trick,” said Nibble. “I’m going to show her what one looks like. She won’t like that. And she won’t like being called Hop-toad, either. She’ll hurry up and get over acting like one.”
So he took the whole family around to the end of the Quail’s Thicket to where a great fat hop-toad lived under a big damp stone, and knocked, thump, thump! And from the dark, shady crack a pair of ruby eyes peeked out at them. Then a wrinkled hand came feeling out, a black hand with a yellow palm showing between its fingers, all spread out and grabby-looking. And then--out came the hop-toad’s nubbly head. My, but he was ugly!
But he’s very nice, you know. He never hurts anybody. Nibble never dreamed that even a silly baby would be afraid of him. “Good morning, Hop-toad,” said Nibble. “This is my family.”
The hop-toad blinked, because he’d been asleep for ever so long and he wasn’t all awake yet. “Oh-er-yes, your family. Quite a family.” He yawned; he opened his toothless mouth wide as wide, and he didn’t even put his hand up. And away went that bad bunny!
Away she went, past the woods-bridge, through the wire fence that goes around Tommy Peele’s Woods and Fields, out into a lane. She ran right into a boy who was walking down it. Then she did her hop-toad trick right over again--she scrouched down in a narrow wheel-rut. And the boy saw her. He reached down and scooped her up in his hand, just as Tommy Peele had done. But he wasn’t Tommy Peele, he was--Louie Thomson!