Читать книгу Uncle Wiggily and the Littletails - Howard R Garis - Страница 7

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Sammie Littletail found that his leg was quite well enough to walk on, without the cornstalk crutch, so the day after his papa’s picture had been taken, the little rabbit boy started to leave the burrow.

“Come along, Susie,” he called to his sister.

“I will also go with you,” said Uncle Wiggily Longears. “I will give you children a few lessons in digging burrows. It is time you learned, for some day you will want an underground house of your own.”

So Mr. Longears led the little rabbits to a nice place in the big park on top of the mountain, where the earth was soft, and showed Sammie and Susie how to hollow out rooms and halls, how to make back and front doors, and many other things a rabbit should know about burrows.

“I think that will be enough of a lesson to-day,” said Uncle Wiggily, after a while. “We will go home, now.”

“No,” spoke Sammie, “I want to dig some more. It’s lots of fun.”

“You had better come with us,” Susie said.

But Sammie would not, though he promised to be home before dark. So while Uncle Wiggily and Susie Littletail started off, Sammie continued to dig. He dug and he dug and he dug, until he was a long distance under ground, and had really made quite a fine burrow for a little rabbit. All at once he felt a sharp pain in his left front leg.

“Ouch!” Sammie cried. “Who did that?”

“I did,” answered a little, furry creature, all curled up in a hole in the ground. “What do you mean by digging into my house? Can’t you see where you are going?”

“Of course,” answered Sammie, as he looked at his sore leg. “But couldn’t you see me coming, and tell me to stop?”

“No, I couldn’t see you,” was the reply.

“Why not?”

“Why not? Because I’m blind. I’m a mole, and I can’t see; but I get along just as well as if I did. Now, I suppose, I’ve got to go to work and mend the hole you made in the side of my parlor. It’s a very large hole.”

The mole lived underground, just as the rabbits did, only in a smaller house.

“I’m very sorry,” said Sammie.

“That doesn’t do much good,” spoke the mole, as she began to stop up the hole Sammie had made. She really did very well for a blind animal, but then she had been blind so long that she did not know what daylight looked like. “You had better dig in some other place, little rabbit boy,” the mole advised, as she finished stopping up the hole.

Sammie thought so himself, and began digging in a new place. He went quite deep, and when he thought he was far enough down, he began digging upward, so as to come out and make a back door to his furrow, as his uncle had taught him to do.

Sammie dug and he dug and he dug. All at once his feet burst through the soft soil, and he found that he had come out on top of the ground. But what a funny place he was in! It was not at all like the part of the park near his burrow, and he was a little frightened. There were many tall trees about, and in one was a big gray squirrel, who sat up and chattered at the sight of Sammie, as if he had never seen a rabbit before.

“What are you doing here?” asked the squirrel. “Don’t you know rabbits are not allowed here?” The squirrel frisked his tail very fast.

“Why not?” asked Sammie.

“Because there are nice trees about, and the keepers of the park fear you and your rabbit family will gnaw the bark off and spoil them.”

“We never spoil trees,” declared Sammie, though he just then remembered that his Uncle Wiggily had once said something about apple-tree bark being very good to eat.

“There’s another reason,” went on the squirrel, chattering away.

“What is it?” asked Sammie.

“Look over there and you’ll see,” was the reply, and when Sammie looked, with his little body half out of the hole he had made, he saw a great animal, with long horns, coming straight at him. He tried to run back down the hole, but he found he had not made it large enough to turn around in.

So Sammie Littletail, frightened as he was at the dreadful animal, had to jump out of the burrow to get ready to run down it again, and, just as he did so, the big animal cried out to him:

“Hold on there!”

Sammie shook with fright, and did not dare move. But, after all, the big animal did not intend to harm him. And what happened, and who the big animal was I will tell you in the next story; if the rubber ball doesn’t bounce in the cup of tea and splash it in the face of the clock.