CHAPTER III
PETER’S GLEE IS SHORT-LIVED
You’ll find it very seldom pays
To play a joke that works both ways.
Mother Bear.
As two frightened little cubs ran, whimpering and tumbling over each other, for the safety of the bedroom under the great windfall, Peter Rabbit thumped twice more just by way of adding to their fright. It was most unkind of Peter. Of course. He should have been ashamed of trying to frighten babies, and those two cubs were babies and nothing more. They were baby Bears.
But Peter had so often felt little cold chills of fear chasing each other up and down his backbone in the presence of Buster Bear and Mrs. Bear that it tickled him to be able to scare any Bears, big or little. Truth to tell, it gave him a feeling as if somehow he was getting even with Buster and Mrs. Bear. Of course he wasn’t. Certainly not. But he had that feeling, and he didn’t once stop to think how cowardly it was to frighten babies, even though they were Bear babies.
After the two cubs had disappeared, he could hear them scrambling along under the great windfall as they hurried for the darkest corner of that dark bedroom where Mother Bear had left them when she went out to look for something to eat. All the way there they whimpered just as if they thought some dreadful enemy was after them. Peter laughed until his sides ached and the tears came to his eyes.
An angry growl right behind him put a sudden end to Peter’s laughter and glee. It was his turn to run headlong and to whimper as he ran. My, what jumps he made! It seemed as if his feet barely touched the ground before he was in the air again. If those little cubs had been scared, Peter was twice as scared. They had run without knowing what they ran from. But Peter knew what he was running from. He was running from an angry mother, and that mother was a Bear. It was enough to make anybody run.