“See that, now! A rabbit, and how he loves his she-rabbit.”
There was nothing for it; the wolf consented to let the rabbit go on parole with the stipulation that he should return exactly at the appointed time. And he kept the bride’s brother as hostage.
“If you are not back the day after to-morrow by six in the morning,” he said, “I’ll eat him instead of you; then if you come I’ll eat you too; perhaps, though, I’ll—ha! ha!—pardon you!”
The squint-eyed one darted off like the arrow from the bow. The very earth quivered as he ran. If a mountain barred his way, he simply dashed at it; if a river, he never stopped to look for a ford, but swam straight across; if a marsh, he sprang from tuft to tuft of grass. Not easy work! To get right across country, and go to the bath, and be married (“I will certainly be married!” he kept repeating to himself), and get back in time for the wolfs breakfast....
Even the birds wondered at his swiftness, and remarked—
“Yes, the Moscow Gazette says that rabbits have no souls, only a kind of vapour, and there it goes.”
At last he arrived. Tongue cannot speak, neither can pen write the rapture of that meeting. The little grey maiden-rabbit forgot her sickness at the sight of her beloved. She stood up on her hind paws, put a drum upon her head, and with her fore-paws beat out the “Cavalier March”; she had been practising it as a surprise for her betrothed. And the widowed lady-rabbit completely lost her head with joy; she thought no place good enough for her future son-in-law to sit in, no food good enough to give him. Then the aunts and cousins and neighbours came running from all sides, overjoyed to see the bridegroom, and perhaps, too, to taste the good cheer.
The bridegroom alone was not like himself. While still embracing his betrothed, he suddenly exclaimed—
“I must go to the bath, and then be married at once.”
“Why should you be in such a hurry?” asked the mother rabbit, smiling.