Her Rabbit gone? It was impossible. The world would be empty without the Rabbit.
Just as she had begun to be sure that he had been eaten, the Hippopotamus put on a pained, choky expression, and opened his mouth a little.
Out popped the Rabbit's head and forepaws. Twisting round and resting the paws on the Hippopotamus's nose he poured upon that animal a shrill torrent of bad language, ending thus:
'Swallow me, would you? Ha, ha! I like that! I've burrowed in bigger hills than you before now, though in none so ugly. Swallow me! Why, for two pins I'd burrow back of my own accord, and make you believe that you had bolted twenty helps of crab and crumpets and cream.'
Here he made a pretence of darting back into the Hippopotamus's mouth, which so alarmed that animal that he gave a violent whistle, and out flew the Rabbit like a pea from a pea-shooter, and rolled far along the sand, which stuck to his damp fur, so that he arose like a little walking sand-pie.
All this while the Light-Horse was sitting unnoticed on the cocoa-nut in the middle of the Junior Oakdene's goal whistling a sad little melody to himself.
Two goals for the Old Janies!
At this the other team were so disgusted that they marched off the field and disappeared.
'I see trouble in the air,' said the Light-Horse, looking darkly from under her eyebrows. 'Since the fame of Princess Jane has spread around there have been stealthy gatherings, every day growing greater, in yonder Black Mountains. All the worst characters of the Desert are there. I heard mutterings among the defeated band. The triumph of the "Janies" this day will set a match to the powder. I see trouble in the air!'
'She wants her dinner, that is all,' said the others, and certainly at the sound of the word dinner, the Light-Horse looked much brighter.