g in her stomach where it should have
been.
"Do you like bread and jam?" she asked, poking the bread she had been
eating at Bumper.
Like a well-bred rabbit, Bumper stuck his nose up and sniffed at the
dainty proffered him; but when he got some of the jam on his nose he
hopped away and sneezed. It was gooseberry jam, and Bumper hated
gooseberries, although he had never tasted of them before.
"Oh, you funny bunnie!" exclaimed the girl. "Why don't you like jam?"
Then she caught a reflection of her face smeared with jam in the pan of
water, and she laughed happily. "I don't wonder you don't like it on your
face, Bumper," she said. "It does look awful, doesn't it? My, I must have
nearly a quart on my face."
Then she began cleaning her lips and chin, using Bumper's pan of water for
a wash basin. Bumper didn't object to this, but he did hope she'd remember
to change it, and give him clean water to drink. Even gooseberry-jam-water
wasn't to his liking.
Early in the morning Edith was carried away by the nurse for her lessons,
and then her music teacher appeared, and Bumper could hear her fine, small
voice singing in accompaniment to the piano. After that she came into the
garden again to play with him.
But she was soon called away to lunch, and then she had to go walking with
her mother, and it was nearly sundown when she returned. Her first thought
was of the rabbit, and she came running pell-mell across the garden to
greet him.
"Have you missed me, Bumper?" she asked, squatting down on the grass in
her new white dress. "I've been awfully lonely without you. I do hate
music lessons and visiting. I wish I could stay here all the time with
you, and maybe eat grass and green things, and grow fat and white like
you. I wonder how it feels to be a rabbit. Yes, I believe next to being a
little girl, I'd rather be a rabbit than anything else. Rabbits don't have
to work or study or sing or do anything. Goodness! what an easy time you
have of it."
Bumper thought so, too, and he began to swell up with pride. He was a very
young rabbit, and he was easily flattered. He wanted to tell her that he
would rather be a white rabbit than a girl with red hair, when the nurse
called Edith to dinner, and she had to leave him.
It was a beautiful moonlight night, and Bumper wasn't a bit sleepy. What
rabbit could be in such a wonderful garden with the moon shining down upon
it. Bumper danced around in his small pen, and sat upon hi
|