“Come here, Watch! Go lie down!” shouted Tommy Peele.
“Why?” whimpered Watch. But Tommy Peele never answered. He couldn’t! There was Tad Coon sniffling through his puffy nose, peering through his squinty eyes, snarling with his swollen lips, and all smeared with Doctor Muskrat’s mud plaster and chewed root poultice. He was making the awfullest faces you ever saw. Maybe you think Tommy Peele could help laughing at him. Well, you couldn’t your own self.
“You lucky coon!” squealed Nibble. “When he laughs he can’t stay angry.”
At the edge of Doctor Muskrat’s pond.
CHAPTER VI
TAD MAKES A COMPACT WITH WATCH AND TOMMY PEELE
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Tommy. “You ought to see yourself. You look a funny picture of a coon with the lines all wiggly.” And Tad Coon certainly did.
But pretty soon Tommy stopped laughing. “You poor beast,” he said in a sorry voice; “it must hurt you awfully.” Nibble Rabbit knew that voice. It was the same one he had used when he took Nibble out of the wire trap and when he let Doctor Muskrat out of the cold steel jaws that had bitten his toe off.
“Er-yow!” argued Watch, Tommy’s dog. He meant it was all Tad’s fault.
“Bz-z-z!” went the wasps who were guarding their nest on the ground until the little white grubs in it should hatch. They meant that they had something to say about it.