There were about twenty Rabbits in the gathering, all of whom I knew by sight if not by name. Some were brown and some were white, and there were an equal number of ladies and gentlemen.
While preparations were going on, the ladies and gentlemen promenaded in couples around the clearing, arm in arm, doubtless whispering tender nothings to each other. They were not afraid of me at all, and some of them would even come and jump over my foot as it was stretched out in front of me.
The first number on the programme was a tug of war engaged in by the gentlemen Rabbits, brown on one side and white on the other. The rope was a long strand of Virginia creeper from which the leaves had been stripped. The brown Rabbits won, and Jenny wig-wagged to me with her curiously intelligent ears that the brown Rabbits were the stronger, because they did not bathe as often as the white ones. This was very interesting. I believe there was some old Greek who renewed his strength every time he touched the ground, and the Rabbits seem to have caught the idea.
Then there was a hurdle race, a game of Leap Frog, another of Follow the Leader, and a very fine game of Base Ball. The ball was a perfectly round gourd which they had found somewhere, and at the proper time Chee-Wee brought in a stuffed Bat, which gave great interest to the game. The old rheumatic Rabbit did not play, but continually made love to Jenny while the sport went on. Poor Jenny! I hope she had too much sense to go and be an old man’s darling.
Presently the moon came up and I let the fire go out. It had warmed the clearing pleasantly, and the birch bark reflector was charred so much that it was of no further use.
Refreshments consisted of clover blossoms, dried, preserved rose petals, and toadstools. The lady Rabbits did not eat the toadstools, and when I asked Jenny why, she patted her stomach suggestively, and then with her delicate ears spelled out to me that they took up too mushroom.
I was enjoying myself exceedingly, and after the refreshments had been cleared away a committee of the gentlemen waited upon me, and, not knowing that I understood their language, pointed suggestively to my concertina.
I took up the instrument and began to play the cake-walk which had first attracted Jenny to my side. Instantly the clearing was full of flying feet, and those who were not dancing were thumping with their hind feet and patting out the tune with their paws. One Rabbit, who seemed to be the clown of the party, would dash around the clearing like the ponies at the circus, now and then taking a high jump, or two or three ungraceful hops in imitation of a Bear trying to dance. It was very amusing.
Round and round they went, their mobile noses whizzing like an automobile as they passed. It was like nothing so much as fireworks of brown and white fur.
When I changed the tune, they changed their steps also. There was a minuet, in which the ladies did themselves proud, and a quadrille in which all joined but the rheumatic Rabbit, who knew the calls and thus served the first useful purpose of the evening. To do him justice, however, I believe that after he had eaten all the clover he could hold, he took a few choice blossoms to a little brown mouse of a Rabbit who seemed not to know anyone.