fast at all. But he managed to reach a
shallow ditch, where he hid and rested for a time, though he
expected any moment that the hired man would pounce on him.

But nothing of the sort happened; though he did hear the hired man
say:

"Well, look at that! What _will_ Mr. Green say when he knows this?"

And that made Billy shiver all over. For he knew exactly what the
hired man meant.

After a while he crept along the ditch. He wanted to get home to
his mother. And at last he reached the pasture, pulled himself
through the long tunnel, and fell in the middle of the chamber
floor and wept.

"Oh, dear!" he cried. "I can't run any more. I'm afraid I can never
run again."

Mrs. Woodchuck took one look at him.

"What have you been eating?" she asked.

"Some little green balls," Billy answered.

"Where have you been eating them?" she inquired. To tell the truth,
she was the least bit worried.

"It was down in Farmer Green's garden," he told her.

"Ah, ha!" said Mrs. Woodchuck. "Green peas!" she said. "Your
father told me this very morning that they were ripe. You ate too
many of them."

"Will I get better?" Billy asked her.

"Yes, indeed!" she replied. "But it's lucky no man came and found
you like that. I don't believe you could ever have got away."

Billy Woodchuck said nothing more just then. But in a little while
he asked his mother another question:

"Is it because they are in Farmer Green's garden that you call them
_green_ peas, Mother?"

VIII

A NEW GAME

Billy Woodchuck and Jimmy Rabbit often played together. Though they
did not look the least bit alike, they agreed almost perfectly in
one thing: they liked the same good things to eat. There was no
place they would rather go than Farmer Green's garden.

But after he had had a bad fright one day, when dog Spot chased him
away from the lettuce-bed, Jimmy Rabbit did not go near the garden
for a long time. But he could not forget the taste of that crisp
lettuce. So one day he said to Billy Woodchuck:

"How would you like to play a new game?"

"What is it?" Billy asked. "If it's fun, of course I'd like it."

"Well--did you ever play beggar?" Jimmy Rabbit asked him.

"No! What's it like?"

"It's like this," Jimmy told him. "You sit up on your hind legs,
hold your hands in front of you, and let your head hang over on one
side. And whenever anybody comes along you say: 'Please give me
something to eat! Nothing has passed these lips for