“I wouldn’t like you to kick me,” Stripes sniffed, nodding his head very earnestly. “You’ve got picky claws on those big furry kickers of yours. They’d rip a fellow worse than teeth do, and you’re awfully big for a rabbit.”
“Am I?” asked Nibble in great surprise. “It’s a long time since I’ve seen another bunny—not since the day my mother left me.”
“Well, you’ll see plenty before long, now that the news is going through the Deep Woods that this is such a peaceful place.” By now they were patting up the beach of Doctor Muskrat’s Pond. Stripes stopped suddenly. “Wait a minute,” he exclaimed, “I’ve got to do something before I meet the doctor.” And off he trotted, his long, hairy tail waggling behind him.
“Peaceful?” thought Nibble. “He calls this peaceful when something’s happening every minute. What must the Deep Woods and the Far Marshes be if this is peaceful? Wonder what that hairy scamp is up to now?” But he didn’t worry.
Pretty soon Stripes came running back with his mouth full. He laid a mouse on the doctor’s flat stone and then he laid something else beside it. “It’s so early,” he explained. “I had quite a hunt to find this potato bug.”
And then didn’t Nibble laugh! And didn’t Doctor Muskrat? But Stripes was deadly serious. “That’s to show you I mean to pay Tommy Peele for those chicks. He’ll have to hunt harder than I did if he wants to find any potato bugs after I’m through with them. I like being good, but how did you know I’d like it?”
“Ahem,” Doctor Muskrat cleared his throat. “Way back in the First-Off Beginning——”
And you know how that would please Nibble.
CHAPTER XII
DOCTOR MUSKRAT TELLS WHY SKUNKS ARE SO
“Way back in the First-Off Beginning,” said Doctor Muskrat impressively, “there was one of the Things-from-under-the-Earth who really wanted to be good——”