“But what’s a boy?” Stripes demanded, his eyes opened very wide.
“A boy? Why, he’s a man’s kitten,” Nibble explained patiently. (Kittens are what Stripes calls his own young.) “This is his hunting ground. But he only hunts Bad Ones. We Woodsfolk aren’t afraid of him, and Doctor Muskrat is his special friend.”
“I must thank Doctor Muskrat,” exclaimed Stripes very eagerly. “I’d like to bring him a present—how about a nice fresh egg? I just found some here.”
And just then Bob White’s wife, over in the Quail’s Thicket, began to scream. “Prr-whit! My nest! Someone’s spoiled my beautiful eggs! Prr-whit! Two of them are nothing but empty shells,” she wailed. And the air was filled with whirring wings. Every other quail in the covey who wasn’t sitting on eggs of her own had come to see what was the matter. And my, but weren’t they angry!
But Nibble Rabbit was angrier still. “You took those eggs!” he accused Stripes. “You just finished telling me so. And you were trying to pretend you would be good. Is that your way?” He looked savage enough to kick Stripes and send him end over end. That’s the rabbit way of fighting. He stamped his feet.
But Stripes never bared a tooth to defend himself. He just turned his back, just as Tad said he always did, and hunched himself into a little ball. “I did,” he confessed. “I did take them but I didn’t know it was bad. Truly I didn’t. Please don’t look that way. I don’t want to do anything more to be sorry for.”
“Then why did you steal?” Nibble demanded.
“I just found them,” Stripes pleaded. “There wasn’t any one with them at all. I knew I mustn’t kill any more quail, but eggs are different. Aren’t they?” he asked anxiously.
“No,” said Nibble. “They are not. This year’s eggs are next year’s quail. If we let every one help himself to all the eggs he came across there wouldn’t be any more quail to lay them.”
“But I’ve always done it,” whimpered Stripes, peeking over his shoulder to see how Nibble was bristling. “And I only took two.”