THE LITTLE KING'S RABBITS.
"Oh, so this is the way they went," said Peggy, and she followed the tracks as long as she could see them.
By and by she came to a cool green lane that led from one side of the road. That was the very place for rabbits, Peggy thought.
"Bunny, bunny, bunny," she called as she peeped in. Not a rabbit or a rabbit track was to be seen, however, and Peggy was hurrying away when she spied by the path a bunch of green clover all tattered and torn, just as if—just as if—
"Rabbit teeth have been nibbling these leaves," cried Peggy joyfully, and she hastened down the lane expecting to see the rabbits at every turn. But she did not find them, though she looked behind every tree, and into every nook and corner from one end of the lane to the other.
There were two roads at the other end of the lane. One led over the hill to the next country. There were many footprints upon it, but they were only the ones the soldiers had left when they marched away to find the white rabbits. The other road ran by the woods where the hunters had hurried. Grass grew upon it, and flowers nodded over it, but there was not a single nibbled leaf to show that the rabbits had been there.
"Dear me, which way shall I go?" said Peggy; but she had scarcely spoken when a breeze blew by. It had been blowing over somebody's garden. Peggy knew that as soon as it passed.
"I smell cabbages," she cried, and away she ran by the woods, and through the flowers, till she came to an old woman's cabbage patch. And there, eating cabbage leaves to their hearts' content, sat the little king's rabbits! Peggy ran home as fast as she had come; and great was the rejoicing in the king's palace when she had told her news.