That did surprise Nibble. “Then,” he went on, “she disappeared. Of course I thought Slyfoot the Mink had caught her. Why do you s’pose she hid away like that?”
“Ask her,” laughed Doctor Muskrat. “Run along, Bunny. Run along and ask her that yourself. They all do it.”
Everyone in the Woods and Fields insists that Chewee the Chickadee can’t keep his wings still or his tongue silent for a minute at a time. But they’re wrong. He sat perfectly quiet all the time Nibble Rabbit was telling Doctor Muskrat about his mate back in the Deep Woods. He had promised to let his mate know when Nibble was coming. He didn’t even let himself laugh when Nibble wanted to know why she had hidden away from him. That is, he didn’t until he saw Nibble hopping around the end of Doctor Muskrat’s pond to the place where Nibble jumps across the brook. Then Chewee took to his stubby wings and maybe you think he didn’t chuckle about it. He got the giggles so hard that he had to perch and hang on tight until he got over them.
Lippity, lippity, lippity, went Nibble’s furry feet--my, but he was in a hurry to find his mate and his baby bunnies! Thump, thump, he went outside the Pickery Things she used to hide in while she waited for him. And out she came, with five of the cunningest, fattest, softest little balls of brown fur you ever saw. And they all twiddled their little tufty, cottony tails and pricked up their soft ears and opened their bright eyes wide at Nibble. But they wouldn’t let him come near them.
They all twiddled their little tufty, cottony tails.
That was because they thought he was angry. He thought he was, too. He said: “Why did you treat me like this, running away and hiding from me, and never even letting me know we had a family? You hurt my feelings dreadfully, Silk-ears.”
“Why, we always do it,” she protested. “Every mother rabbit makes her nest in some place where it’s hidden even from the father rabbit.”
“But you didn’t need to,” said Nibble. “We’re different. You didn’t think I’d hurt them, did you? Birds don’t do that. I’d have helped you take care of them.”
“That’s what father rabbits always say,” laughed Silk-ears, for that was the mother rabbit’s name.