In school he wasn’t any good at all; just sat and looked out of the window and scratched things with his jackknife. He spoiled his books and spilled ink on the floor, but he loved big dictionary words and knew lots of them, so sometimes we didn’t know just what he was talking about. He played truant oftener than any of the big boys; maybe it was because it was so easy for him to get away, being so small he could slip out before teacher noticed.
But the school house janitor—Old Crab, we called him—was always on the lookout for Bunny Face. He was really a terrible person, evil and hateful. He hobbled on one crutch and lived in a battered old shanty by the dump. You see, he didn’t have a wife—dead or something; but the shanty was just full of children. They were all sizes and all starved looking—and bad too.
Bunny Face knew the woods all about as most children knew their own back lot, and he used to walk miles and miles through any kind of weather, for, as he said, things happened in the woods and there were water spirits down in the creek. He kept track of all the little animals, and he knew what trees had squirrels living in them and where certain birds had their nests. But when he told about them the creatures that lived in the woods seemed exactly like folks. Well, late one afternoon on his way home, when he’d been prowling around all day, he heard a most awful racket, then barking. And suddenly a Maltese cat flattened itself and wiggled under the fence and shot up a tree. Bunny Face looked over the fence into the garden. Yes, there was the very dog, only he was tied. Right that minute an old man came out and said “Well, well,” and “What, what,” the way old people do.
“Is she yours?” Bunny Face pointed up in the branches.
“No, sonny,” answered the old man.
“Guess I’ll get her then,” said Bunny Face; and he began to coax “Nice kitty, nice kitty” till the cat came down within reach. She was a poor, thin thing with eager eyes and shabby ears. But he thought that she had a fine coat.
“Let’s give her some supper,” said the old man.
So that is the way it came about that Bunny Face and the Parson started being friends.
Right away they began to get acquainted there in the kitchen while the cat lapped milk, and the Parson invited Bunny Face to stay to supper. He said that he could, all right; so that was settled and they went into the other room to sit by the fire till suppertime.
“Think I’ll take my cat,” said Bunny Face.