OR, THE WORLD BEWITCHED.
IN an instant Andy stopped turning, and saw sitting on the grass right before him the most beautiful white rabbit, with the softest fur and the longest ears that ever were.
“O Bunny!” cried Andy, delighted; and he stepped forward to smooth the lovely creature with his hand.
He had scarcely touched it, when it gave a little hop, and sat down again, just out of his reach.
“Bunny, Bunny! poor Bun!” cried Andy, coaxingly, creeping after it, as eager to catch it as ever a cat was to put her paw on a mouse. “I won't hurt you! Poor, poor Bunny!”
But the rabbit watched him with its mild, timid eyes, and gave two leaps, as light as a feather, and as noiseless, and sat down again by the garden fence. Andy crept up, still coaxing, and promising not to hurt it; and when he had got quite near, he spread out both hands, gave a spring like a cat, and caught a whole handful of grass right where the pretty creature had sat that very instant; but it was gone, and, looking over the fence, he saw it hopping away across the garden, from cabbage to cabbage, from hill to hill of the potatoes, in the airiest and most graceful manner, but not half as fast as a boy could run. So Andy resolved to chase it; and getting over the fence, he hurried across the garden, and came up to it just as it was perched for a moment like a bird on the top of a slender weed, which did not bend in the least beneath its weight. Andy grasped eagerly with both hands, and caught the weed between them; but away went the rabbit over the next fence, and across a large sunny pasture, making wonderful leaps, so long and light and high that sometimes it seemed to sail in the air on wings.
Andy ran after it, wild with excitement. Now it slipped through his fingers just as he pounced upon it, and tumbled headlong into a bunch of thistles. Now it floated in the air quite above his head, while he reached up and jumped, and ran on tiptoe after it, until he hit his foot against a stone, which he was looking too high to see, and nearly broke his shin in falling. Then it skipped along close upon the ground, stopping when he stopped, and seeming to invite him to come and catch it, but darting away again the moment he thought he had it fairly in his hands.
At last it squatted down against a stump, in a large, hilly field full of stumps and stones and ploughed ground, where Andy had never been before.