Peter had never seen a baby like it before. While he was watching and wondering whose baby it could be, another joined it. They tumbled and rolled over each other. They played tug-of-war with a little stick, each holding one end. They made believe bite each other. It was very rough play, but the rougher it was the better they seemed to like it. Peter watched them for a long time. Then, because he had a cramp in one of his feet, he moved ever so little, and in doing so he rustled the leaves. Instantly the two brown babies disappeared as if the earth had swallowed them up. Peter waited, but they didn’t appear again.
At last his curiosity proved too much for him. He hopped over to the spreading roots of the old tree and there was the nicest little doorway he had ever seen. He knew then where the two brown babies had disappeared.
“I wonder,” muttered Peter, “whose babies those were. I wonder—” A sudden thought popped into his head. It made him jump right up in the air. “Do you suppose that those could have been Little Joe Otter’s babies?” he exclaimed right out loud to nobody in particular. Then, because he was so full of his discovery, he scampered away to the dear Old Briar-patch to tell Mrs. Peter all about it.
One morning he saw Mrs. Joe out with the two babies. [Page 28].
CHAPTER V
A SCHOOL IN THE GREEN FOREST
It is Old Mother Nature’s rule
For every one to go to school.
Little Joe Otter.
Peter Rabbit could not keep away from the Green Forest. No, Sir, he couldn’t. He just couldn’t do it. You see, having discovered those two queer, brown babies under a big tree on the bank of the Laughing Brook, he just had to go back there every chance he could get to watch them. So, whenever he could, he slipped over there to watch. He kept as still as still could be, and not once did those little brown babies suspect that he was near. Every day they came out to play, but at the least sound they would disappear in that snug home, the doorway of which was between the roots of the big tree.