o
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.

Almost crying, he was so vexed and tired and far from home, he came up
to the stump. Bunny did not stir, but only winked a little, and pricked
up its pretty ears.

"Now I'll have you!" And Andy sprang upon it, catching it with both
hands. "I've got you! I've got you! I've got you!" he cried, in high
glee. "Now, my pretty, naughty--ho!" said Andy, with the greatest
amazement.

For lo! on opening his hands, he found that the thing he had given such
a chase, and caught at last, was nothing but a little ball of
thistle-down, which had been blown before him by the wind!

There he held it, and rubbed his eyes as he looked at it, and wondered;
then he began to remember what Mother Q