My, but Tad was sorry! But the rat was mistaken. The bunny wasn’t dead. She was just stretched out because she felt too weak to sit up any more. And Tad had waked up Louie Thomson with his snarling and shaking.
The little boy looked in at Tad. Tad glared back and growled at him. He gnashed his teeth when Louie tried the door to be sure it was locked. “You’re a horrid, hateful thing!” Louie snapped crossly. But he didn’t feel that way about the little rabbit.
He picked her out of the box, and she tried to curl up in his hand again, for it was the warmest thing she’d felt since she left her Mammy Silk-ears. That was too much for Louie. She was still trusting him; he felt a choke in his throat. “Don’t die, Bunny,” he almost sobbed. “Please don’t die. I didn’t know you were too little to leave your mother. If I take you home maybe she’ll find you.”
So he covered her up all warm and snug in his hands and began to run. He ran away down to the end of Doctor Muskrat’s pond, where it goes under the woods-bridge. He didn’t put her down in the road where he found her--even a boy knew that was no place for bunnies. He took her across the fence and laid her down where she could hide under the edge of the very same stone that belonged to the hop-toad. Then he went back to the fence to watch.
When she found herself all alone the poor baby began to call again in her weak voice: “Mammy, mammy!” Of course, the hop-toad heard. Out he came scrambling; he took just one look at Nibble Rabbit’s bad baby and then off he went in the biggest kind of a hop-toad hurry after Nibble.
Did you ever see a hop-toad in a hurry? He doesn’t hurry very often and he doesn’t hurry very fast, but he makes an awful fuss about it. He gulps a great big breath and then he shuts his mouth tight, tight, and flops along as hard as ever he can. Because when he’s used up that mouthful of breath he’ll have to stop and gulp another. That was the way the hop-toad hurried when he went to find Nibble.
But he didn’t have to hop so very far, because Bob White Quail was scratching about in his thicket. The hop-toad took two big gulps and then he had breath enough to gasp: “Fly quick! Tell Nibble Rabbit I’ve found his lost bunny.” And Bob White didn’t stop to ask any questions; he flew!
It seemed a long time to the poor, cold, hungry little bunny; she lay there under the edge of the hop-toad’s stone, calling her mammy, for she didn’t know where the hop-toad had gone. But I can tell you it seemed a lot longer to Louie Thomson. He was sitting on the fence feeling very sorry that he’d picked up that cunning little rabbit, and taken it home with him. And she wasn’t wishing her mother would come any harder than he was.
Then--ka-flick-it, ka-flick-it, ka-flick-it, came furry footsteps. Silk-ears came leaping over the tops of the grasses faster than Nibble ever ran, even when Glider the Blacksnake was after him. Faster than Bob White Quail can fly she came; as fast as a fish darting across Doctor Muskrat’s pond. And four other little bunnies came swishing through the grasses behind her. They couldn’t begin to follow her tail; they had to follow Nibble’s.
In just about two licks of a tongue Silk-ears had that lost bunny cuddled down beside her and was feeding her. My, how that hungry baby did eat! She ate and ate with her little eyes shut, too busy to pay any attention to her brothers and sisters, or to Nibble, or even to that very nice hop-toad. Her little sides grew fatter and fatter. By and by she felt so fat she had to roll over on her side, and the first thing anybody knew she was asleep. Right there in the sun--no place in the world for a sleepy bunny--but there she dozed. And nothing troubled her, not even a buzzy fly--because the hop-toad soon gulped him in. Tommy Peele’s Woods and Fields were all quiet and peaceful.