The next day, when I brought out the plate of spaghetti for my luncheon, intending to divide, as usual, with my guests, they both scampered off at such a mad pace that I could see nothing but a cloud of dust and the gleam of light from their white tails. I did not know that anything on earth could go at such a pace as that, though my mother used to tell me, when she was making my gingham shirts, that brown and white were always fast colours. I believe it now, but I did not then, for those shirts never used to get me to school on time during the swimming season, and, indeed, often delayed me, with unaccountable knots in the sleeves.
Chee-Wee soon grew into a good-sized Rabbit. He used to stand up on his hind legs and bite the trees as high as he could reach. One tree, a few feet from my cabin door, is scarred with these tiny teeth marks from the height of one inch above the ground, where he could just reach when he was a little baby Rabbit, up to three feet and eighteen inches from the ground, which measured his height in his prime.
Any Rabbit, passing through the woods, would know that he was on Chee-Wee’s reservation, and would stop to measure his height on the tree. If he was taller than Chee-Wee, he would go on, and when they met, they would fight it out with claw and tooth and fang and the wild rush through the long-burrows that honeycombed the earth beneath my cabin. If the trespasser was not as tall as Chee-Wee, he would go away, taking long jumps that he might not leave any tracks.
This custom is also followed out by Bears, as any writer on the subject will tell you. I am always willing to give my fellow Unnaturalists credit for what they see. Goodness knows it is little enough, compared with what I have done.
Jenny’s school was near the lake, beyond a hill, and securely sheltered from observation except from the water. When a canoe approached, they all had plenty of time to hide before it came near enough to be dangerous. These brown, fuzzy things are so much like the landscape that they are fully protected.
Usually, a Rabbit does not travel much in the daytime. They are nocturnal animals and by day they sit in forms, or cases, that they have made of grass and leaves and their combings and stationed in secluded spots. When they get tired of living in one place, they change their spots, but it always means the building of a new form.
The Rabbits were not afraid of me, however, and I shall never forget the day that I rowed up silently along the shore and came upon Mistress Jenny’s school. The baby Rabbits were all sitting on toadstools, with their spelling-books held up close to their faces. One little Rabbit missed a word while I was looking on, and was promptly put to bed on account of his sick spell, as was quite right and proper.
There was a large map made on the hill just back of the teacher’s desk, and a tin pail, freshly filled with water, stood in one corner. They drank out of a nutshell, cunningly chiselled by sharp little teeth into the shape of a cup, and many were the trips to the corner. How it reminded me of my own schooldays!
Another little brown Rabbit, who seemed to be a very naughty bunny, brought a Spider to school and put it in Jenny’s desk while she was teaching the youngest class to count. Jenny learned what she knew of arithmetic from an old Adder that lived under a log in the woods. When she saw the Spider, she instantly called the culprit to her, and in plain sight of the whole school punished him severely with a lady’s slipper that I had unaccountably missed from my flower bed.
