The Rabbit

T HE rabbit was the first animal that Tommy Smith met after his chat with the owl that night, when he went to sleep in the middle of talking to him, and I am not sure that it was not the very next day that it happened. In a wood some way from his father's house there was an open space with bracken growing round about it, and when Tommy Smith got there, in the course of his walk, he lay down amongst the cool green fronds, for it was a hot day, so he felt glad of a little rest. But he did not lie long, for almost as soon as he had settled himself, a rabbit started up from the opposite side of the clearing and began to run across it, and Tommy Smith soon saw that he was coming straight towards him. This made him sit up so as to be all ready for a conversation, and he had scarcely got into the proper position when the rabbit was right in front of him, and sitting up too, all ready to be spoken to, if he should begin the conversation. Tommy Smith thought that perhaps he had better begin it as the rabbit seemed to be waiting. "Well, Bunny," he said, but the rabbit looked as if he thought that a little familiar, so he began again with, "Well, Mr. Rabbit, I suppose you have come over here to see me?"

"I saw you as soon as you got out of the wood," said the rabbit, "and I have come to have a little talk with you. I have heard of your conversations with the other animals, and I thought it would never do if I  were not represented."

"Represented!" said Tommy Smith. "I suppose you mean if you didn't have a conver-sation with me too?"

"Yes, that is what I mean," said the rabbit, "only it is rather a poor way of saying it. Just to have a talk is nothing, but to be represented, you know, is important."

"But if it is the same thing——" began Tommy Smith.

"Why then we shall be having an important conversation even if we hardly say anything," said the rabbit; "and it is very nice to know that."

"I think it will depend on what we do say," said Tommy Smith, but the rabbit only stamped with its hind feet—impatiently he thought—and then he remembered what the hare had said about the brains not being on that  side of the family.

"As for importance," the rabbit began again, "what I  say, at any rate, will be all about myself I have a great deal to tell you, only you seem to be bad at asking questions." And again the rabbit stamped its feet, and looked more impatient than before.

"Why do you do that, Mr. Rabbit?" said Tommy Smith.

"Now we commence," said the rabbit, and then added, "That is one of my greatest accomplishments."

"But why do you do it?" Tommy Smith asked again.

"Oh, there is a very good reason," answered the rabbit. "You see if there were a lot of us together, and anything at all suspicious were to happen—for instance, if a man were to come, which is always suspicious, you know—the one of us who saw him first would stamp as hard as he could, and we would all be down our burrows in hardly any time."

"Oh, then it is a signal," said Tommy Smith.

"Yes," said the rabbit, "and when any of us hear it we know just what it means, because it is always the same."

"But why did you do it just now?" asked Tommy Smith, "because you don't seem at all afraid of me, Mr. Rabbit, and there are no other rabbits here."

"Oh, if it comes to that," said the rabbit, "I often stamp when I feel a little impatient or excited. It relieves one's feelings, you know, and besides, there is nothing like practice."

"But," said Tommy Smith, "if you sometimes stamp for one thing and sometimes for another, I don't see how your friends are to know what you mean. They might run to their burrows when there was no danger at all, just because they happened to hear you."

"Well, and why not?" said the rabbit. "After all, there's nothing like being in one's burrow, and even if there was no danger when one went down, one could never tell that there wasn't, sitting at the bottom."

"But you might feel rather foolish when you came up again, and found that it had been a false alarm, Mr. Rabbit," said Tommy Smith.

"Oh, then we should have forgotten all about it," said the rabbit. "We are merry little things, you know, and never think of troubling about what is past. We rabbits do not brood."

To Tommy Smith it seemed that the rabbit's signal was not quite such a good one as he thought it was; but as he saw that the rabbit would not agree with him, he thought it best to change the subject, and so he only said, "I suppose your burrow is your house, Mr. Rabbit?"

"I should think it was," said the rabbit. "And a very nice comfortable little house it is too. I only wish you could come down and see it. But of course you are too big."

"I could see the entrance to it if you were to show it me," said Tommy Smith, "and then if I were to bring a spade——"

"A spade!" cried the rabbit, with quite a little jump into the air. "What, to dig my house up under my feet? You wouldn't like me to pull your house down over your head, I suppose?"

"Oh, no," said Tommy Smith, "but——"

"I don't see any 'but' about it," said the rabbit. "It is exactly the same thing, only I  have a wife and family, which——"

"Oh, do let me see them!" said Tommy Smith, before the rabbit could go on, and he looked so interested, and as if he would never think of hurting them, that the rabbit said, "Well, perhaps you shall; but you must promise not to think about a spade any more".

So Tommy Smith promised, and as soon as he had, the rabbit cried, "Come along!" and began to run across the open space again, stopping every now and then for Tommy Smith to catch him up, for he  could not run nearly so fast, and as for walking, that did not seem to suit the rabbit at all. He was in much too great a hurry. As soon as he had got to the other side he made a little dive into the bracken, and then called out, "Here it is," and when Tommy Smith came up, quite out of breath, he found him sitting by the side of as neat a little rabbit-hole as he had ever seen. But it was not only he, for there in the very mouth of the burrow, in the shade of a nice large bracken fern that drooped over it, sat another rabbit looking so like him that Tommy Smith would not have known which was which if the one he had been speaking to had not given a little wave with his paw towards the burrow and said immediately, "Allow me to introduce you. This is my wife. You need have no fear, my dear," he added, "for this, you know, is Tommy Smith, the boy who has promised never to hurt an animal."

"As for that," said the new rabbit, "I daresay he couldn't catch me if he tried. I am not afraid for myself, but our little ones are not so wide-awake, and perhaps he might want to take them away and put them in a hutch."

"I would take great care of them——" Tommy Smith was beginning.

"There! I told you so," said the second rabbit; and then the first one looked very grave, and said, "It is not enough not to hurt animals; you ought to be kind to them too. That is what the owl meant, and I am sure if he had thought you were going to put any of us in prison——"

"Prison!" cried Tommy Smith, "oh, no, it would be a proper hutch, made on purpose. A rabbit-hutch, you know."

"You may call a prison a hutch, if you like," said the rabbit, "but that doesn't make it any different. Why, even our burrow, which is more comfortable than anything you could make, would be a prison if we could not get out of it."

"I wonder," said the other rabbit, "how any one can be so cruel as to keep a creature that was made to run and jump and be happy all day, in a place too small for it to run and jump in, and where it can't be happy at all. As for me, I think I would sooner be shot—though that must be very unpleasant—than have to live like some of those poor rabbits that I have sometimes seen hanging up in boxes, against the walls of cottages."

"But they are tame rabbits, you know," said Tommy Smith, "so perhaps they don't mind it so much."

"Tame or wild," said the rabbit, "I am sure they would be very glad to be running about in the fields, and as for their not getting water which I am told that they don't get——"

"But I thought rabbits didn't drink water," said Tommy Smith.

At this both the rabbits looked very astonished, and the one that had first made Tommy Smith's acquaintance said, "Well, I don't know what dew is if it isn't water. We drink that at any rate. In the early morning and in the evening, which are the times that we like best to feed in, the grass is all covered with dew, but it is different with a piece of dry cabbage leaf that has lain all night in the kitchen, or been cut after the sun is high. That is the prison diet, I believe, and I have it on the authority of a tame rabbit that escaped. You may ask him what he  thinks of hutches, if you like."

"I confess I have strong feelings on this subject," said the lady rabbit, "and without a promise never to keep us in hutches I cannot consent that my little ones——"

"Oh, do let me see them, Mrs. Bunny," cried Tommy Smith, "and I promise never to keep a rabbit shut up in a hutch, whether it is a wild or a tame one."

Both the rabbits looked very pleased at this, and the first one said, "I think you may trust him, my dear, he has lately become a boy of good, character."

"Well, if they're not asleep," said the mother rabbit. "But if they are I wouldn't wake them up for anything."

"But do you think they are?" said Tommy Smith, who, of course, did not want them to be.

"It wouldn't be very wonderful, I'm sure," said the mother rabbit, "considering what a nice soft mattress they have to lie upon."

"A mattress!" cried Tommy Smith.

"Yes, indeed," said the mother rabbit, "and one that I make myself, too. If you stoop down and look at my breast, you will see what I make it with."

So Tommy Smith stooped down and looked at the rabbit's breast, and then he saw that a lot of the fur had been pulled out of it, so that in places it was almost naked. "Oh, Mrs. Rabbit," he cried, "do you really do that to yourself? That is  good of you."

"As to that," said the father rabbit, "it is just her nature. Things come easy to one when it is one's nature to do them. Do they not, my dear? If it was my nature I would do it at once, and think nothing of it."

"I don't think anything of it either," said the mother rabbit. "What I  think of is my little ones. They  are quite enough for me."

"Of course," said the father rabbit. "She would not be a mother if she didn't feel like that. As she is, it's her nature."

Tommy Smith could not help thinking that it was very good of the mother rabbit to pull out her own fur for her young ones to lie on, and he did not quite like the father rabbit's way of explaining it. However, as he did not quite know where it was wrong, and as the mother rabbit seemed to agree with him, he thought it was no use to argue about it, and so he only said, "I should  like to see your young ones, Mrs. Bunny".

"As soon as they are awake," said the mother rabbit, "they are sure to come and sit at the mouth of the burrow—at least, if they feel inclined to. Meanwhile, perhaps you would like to see us  have a little game."

"Oh, indeed, I should," said Tommy Smith, and he had scarcely said so when the two bunnies scampered into the open space, and began to play the funniest little game you can imagine. First they ran in opposite directions, but as soon as there was a little distance between them they turned round and came bounding towards each other, as if neither of them meant to get out of the other's way. It seemed as if there was going to be a collision; but just at the right moment they both made a jump up into the air and one of them went right over the other. When they came down they were back to back, and there was a little space between them again. But they both turned round directly, and then there was another run and another jump, and so it went on, whilst Tommy Smith sat and watched them and wished he could play at it too. Every time one of the rabbits flew right over the head of the other, and it seemed to Tommy Smith that they took it in turns. "They must do, I think," he said to himself, "because if not, they would be sure to knock against each other sometimes, but they never do. One always goes higher than the other, and they must have arranged that between them."

All at once the two little bunnies stopped their play and came running towards Tommy Smith. "How did you like it?" they cried out together. "Isn't it a very nice game?"

"Oh, I should think so!" Tommy Smith answered, clapping his hands. "What do you call it?"

"Oh, we have several names," said the father rabbit. " 'The game of jumps' is one."

"Yes, or 'Over and over,' " said the mother rabbit.

"Or 'Excuse my tail,' " said the father one. "That is the best name, I think."

" 'Excuse my tail'?" said Tommy Smith. "That is  a funny name. I don't understand what that means."

"Why, you see," said the father rabbit, "when we come down after each jump, we are back to back so that each of us has his tail turned to the other. But that is not quite polite, you know, and we turn round so quickly, it is just as if we had thought of it and said, 'Excuse my tail,' both together. We don't say so, of course—it would be too formal, you know—but it looks like that, and so that is the name I give it. It was I that thought of it."

" 'Over and over' is my  name," said the mother rabbit. "It expresses it just as well I  think—and it's simpler."

"Simpler, perhaps," said the father rabbit, "but not so refined or elegant. The other is more civilised."

"But we do jump over and over," said the mother rabbit, "and we don't say, 'Excuse my tail'."

"But we think it," said the father rabbit, "or at least we ought to do."

"I never thought of such a thing in my life," said the mother rabbit, "and I don't think you would have done, if it had not been for that tame rabbit who came here with all sorts of funny ideas in his head. He had lived with his wife in a hutch, you know, and when people live in that way they want something silly to amuse them. 'Over and over,' that is my name."

" 'Excuse my tail,' " said the father rabbit.

Tommy Smith agreed with the mother rabbit; but he thought it would be best not to say so, as it might hurt the other's feelings. So all he said was, "Well, I think it is a very pretty game, and I think you must lead a very happy life here together, with your nice burrow amongst the bracken, and a nice space like this to play in."

"Oh, it would be very nice," said the mother rabbit, "if only we were left alone. But we rabbits are persecuted, and that is not nice at all."

"I suppose you have some enemies?" said Tommy Smith.

"Yes," said the mother rabbit, "and the worst one of all is a man. There is a man here, only I  call him a monster——"

"You may just as well call him a man," said the father rabbit, "for it means the same thing."

"——who is always shooting us," the mother rabbit continued. "He wears gaiters and a velveteen coat."

"Oh, but he  is the gamekeeper," said Tommy Smith.

"I don't see how that makes it any better," said the mother rabbit. "Whoever he is, he ought to be ashamed of himself A nice thing, indeed, to go about shooting poor little bunnies like us that never did him any harm."

"But, you know," said Tommy Smith—he felt rather uncomfortable saying it, but his father had told him so, and he felt sure it was right—"you know, that you rabbits have to be kept down."

"Kept down!" cried both the rabbits at the same time.

"Yes," said Tommy Smith, "because, you know, if you weren't, there would be too many of you."

"Well," said the father rabbit, "of all the cold-blooded theories!"

"I'm very sorry," said Tommy Smith—and he really felt so—"and of course it must seem very cruel to you. But my father has often told me that if rabbits were not shot regularly they would overrun the whole country."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said the mother rabbit. "Why, I have no more than seven children at the present time, and they are only my second family since the spring. If I have another before the summer is out, it will be as many as I ever do have. It takes me a year very nearly, from the day I am born, to become a grandmother. Overrun the country, indeed!"

"And then," said Tommy Smith—it seemed rather unfriendly to say so, but he felt that he must speak the truth—"don't you do a lot of harm to trees by biting the bark off, all round them?"

"Why, what are we to eat," said the father rabbit, "when the snow is on the ground, and covers everything up, or when it is a hard frost, so that the ground is like iron? You would think it very hard to have no dinner yourself in the winter, and if we didn't nibble the bark of trees we should have none."

"And even if they must shoot us," said the mother rabbit, "though you will never persuade me  it is right, they needn't set those horrid traps for us, which break our legs and hold us for days together whilst we die slowly of pain and starvation. How would you like to have two rows of sharp iron teeth biting into your arm or ankle, and holding you tight whilst you lay at the very door of your house, without being able to get into it, however much you tried, and when every time you did try it hurt you horribly? How would you like that?"

"And how would you like to have a great white snake come creeping down the stairs and put his head into the room you were sitting in, and begin to eat your eyes out, whilst you sat there, too frightened to move?" said the father rabbit.

"A white snake!" cried Tommy Smith.

"Yes," said the mother rabbit. "And when at last you did run out of the room and up the stairs, how would you like to find yourself caught in a net at the top, and to be beaten to death with a stick, or shot, or torn to pieces by dogs? How would you like that?"

Tommy Smith had to confess that he would not like it at all.

"Do you think it right?" said the father rabbit, with a very grave look.

"No, indeed," Tommy Smith answered. "I think things like that are very cruel indeed, and I don't think it can be right to be cruel. I have heard people say that steel traps ought to be made illegal."

"And white snakes?" said the mother rabbit anxiously. "They're even worse."

"I don't think they can be really snakes," said Tommy Smith. "It must be ferrets that you mean."

"They're long enough for snakes, I'm sure," said the father rabbit. "Weasels are long enough in all conscience, and anything longer than a weasel must be a snake."

"They're ferrets," said Tommy Smith. "I've seen them in hutches, and I know a farmer who keeps them."

"Well," said the father rabbit, "I should like to hear you say one thing, and that is that you will never go ferreting."

"No," said Tommy Smith, "I never will."

Both the rabbits looked very pleased at hearing this, and the mother one said, "Ah, what a pleasant life it would be if it were not for men, weasels, white snakes and foxes".

"Foxes!" cried Tommy Smith. "Oh, do tell me something about the fox."

"Don't talk of him," said the father rabbit. "He is really not a fit person to speak about."

"He is the cruellest, wickedest creature in the whole world," said the mother rabbit.

"And so cunning," said the father rabbit, "that even we  are no match for him."

"I should like to have a conversation with him," said Tommy Smith; but the mother rabbit drew herself up very stiffly and said, "Indeed! Then I fear my  company——" and she at once began springing away to her burrow.

"You have offended her, I fear," said the father rabbit; and then he called out, "Never mind, my dear. Tommy Smith is only a little boy."

"The smallest hint is sufficient," said the mother rabbit, "and hearing about foxes makes me feel anxious for my little ones. However, he may come with me if he likes."

Tommy Smith certainly did like, and running up, what was his delight to see five quite tiny little bunnies sitting close together just outside the burrow.

"What a group they make!" said the mother rabbit. "The rest are inside; but I daresay they will be out soon, and then you can compare each one with all the others, and make up your mind as to which you think the most remarkable."

To Tommy Smith it seemed as if all the little rabbits that were outside were just alike, and he could not help thinking that the ones that were inside were not very different to them. But he thought they all looked very nice, and he longed to have one in his hand. Although they were so small, yet in everything else they seemed quite grown up—not babies at all—and, every now and then, one of them would sit up and begin to clean his face with his paws, just in the same way as his parents.

"Their whiskers are not what they will be," said the mother rabbit, "but such as they are, they know how to look after them. Well, and what do you think of them?" she continued, looking up at Tommy Smith. "You need not say they are pretty if you don't think so. Remarks like that should come from the heart."

"Oh, indeed, I think they are pretty," said Tommy Smith. "They are almost as pretty as——"

"Almost?" said the mother rabbit.

"Oh, no, quite," said Tommy Smith, feeling he had made a mistake. "Or even prettier."

"Than what?" said the mother rabbit.

It was kittens that Tommy Smith had been thinking about, and he would have mentioned them if the mother rabbit had not interrupted him. But her doing so gave him time to reflect that kittens change into cats, and that cats are not very friendly to rabbits, and then he thought he had better say nothing about them. So instead, when the mother rabbit said, "Than what?" he answered, "Than anything I have ever seen," and then asked if he might stroke the young rabbits.

"If they will let you," said the mother rabbit. "My plan is to allow my children to do as they please. I do not believe in constraining them."

"Self-development is our maxim," said the father rabbit.

But Tommy Smith did not hear him, or even the last remark of the mother rabbit, for he had gone down on his hands and knees, and was crawling towards the little rabbits, who con-tinued to sit quite still on the edge of the burrow, and did not seem to see him. At last he got quite near and was just stretching out his hand to take hold of the nearest one, when all at once there was a jump and a scamper, and all the little rabbits had disappeared down the hole.

"You can't go after them, you know," said the father rabbit, "because you are too big."

"And besides, if they were to go to sleep again now, after such violent exercise you would be sure to wake them up," said the mother rabbit.

"What am I to do?" asked Tommy Smith, in rather a melancholy voice, for he had made sure of getting one of the little rabbits, and felt quite disappointed.

"Well," said the father rabbit, "you may sit down quietly just where you are now, and wait till they come out."

"And when they do?" said Tommy Smith.

"Why, then," said the mother rabbit, "you may try again."

But Tommy Smith thought that he might have to wait a long time; so he said good-bye to the rabbits, and set off home through the woods.