o long as you do. I must say that they look
very queer. How'd you like to have me trim them for you?"

"Tell you what we'll do," Jimmy Rabbit said. "I'll cut off your tail
and you'll cut off my ears. What do you say?"

Somehow or other, Frisky did not quite like the idea of losing his
tail. He was so used to having it that he was afraid he might miss it
dreadfully. And he even thought that he would rather keep it--even if
it _was_ out of fashion.

But Jimmy Rabbit ran home to get his mother's shears. And when he came
back with them Frisky couldn't think of any good excuse for not
letting Jimmy cut off his tail for him. As Jimmy came hopping up with
the shears, Frisky Squirrel put out his paw.

"What do you want?" asked Jimmy.

"The shears!" Frisky said. "I'm going to trim your ears, you know."

"Oh--yes!" Jimmy answered. "But I thought of this _first_, you
remember. So I'll cut your tail off first. Then you'll have your
turn--see?" He kept a firm hold on the shears. And almost before Frisky
knew what was happening Jimmy had stepped behind him and had placed
Frisky's tail between the big shears.

"Will it hurt?" Frisky asked, as he looked behind him.

"It'll all be over in a jiffy," said Jimmy Rabbit.

XI

Jimmy Rabbit is too Late

It was just as Jimmy Rabbit had said. You remember that as he stood
behind Frisky Squirrel's back with his mother's big shears, all ready
to cut off Frisky's tail, he had told Frisky that "it would all be
over in a jiffy"?

Well, it _was_. But things didn't happen just as Jimmy Rabbit had
expected. He had taken a good, firm grip on the shears, and he was
just about to shut them upon Frisky's tail with a snap, when somebody
called Frisky's name. Frisky knew who it was right away. It was his
mother! And like most of us, when our mothers catch us doing something
we ought not to do, Frisky was so surprised and so startled that he
gave a great jump.

That jump was all that saved Frisky's tail. For just as Mrs. Squirrel
called, Jimmy Rabbit shut the shears together as hard as he could. But
Jimmy was too late. When Frisky jumped, his tail followed him, of
course. It whisked out from between the shears; and they closed upon
nothing at all.

"Now, that's too bad!" Jimmy exclaimed. He had been so interested in
what he was doing that he had never heard Mrs. Squirrel at all. "Come
back here and we'll try again."

The words were scarcely out of Jimmy Rabbit's mouth when he recei