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 he led them 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.
"I think that will be enough of a lesson to-day," said Uncle Wiggily Longears, 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," remarked Susie.
But Sammie would not, though he promised to be home before dark. So while Uncle Wiggily Longears 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 fore leg.
"Ouch!" he 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 one." The mole, you see, 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," the mole concluded, as she finished stopping up the hole.
Sammie thought so himself, and did so. 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, as his uncle had taught him to do. He 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?"
"Why not?" asked Sammie.
"Because there are nice trees about, and the keepers of the park fear you and your family will gnaw the bark off and spoil them."
"We never spoil trees," declared Sammie, though he just then remembered that his Uncle, Wiggily Longears, 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 as 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 to-morrow night.
VI
SAMMIE AND SUSIE HELP MRS. WREN
The big animal with the horns came close to Sammie.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I--I don"t know," replied the little rabbit boy.
"How did you get here?"
"I was digging a new burrow, and I--I just happened to come out here.
But I"ll go right away again, if you"ll let me."
"Of course I"ll let you. Don"t you know it"s against the rules of the park to be here? What do you suppose they have different parts of the park for, if it isn"t to keep you rabbits out of certain places?"
"I"m sure I don"t know," was all Sammie could say.
"Do you know who I am?" asked the horned creature.
"No--no, sir."
"Well, I"m a deer."
"My--my mother calls me that, sometimes, when I"ve been real good," said Sammie.
"No, I don"t mean that kind at all," and the deer tried to smile. "My name is spelled differently. I"m a cousin of the Santa Claus reindeer.
But you must go now. No rabbits are allowed in the part of the park where we live. You should not have come," and the deer shook his horns at Sammie.
"I--I never will again," said the little rabbit boy, and then, before the deer knew it, Sammie jumped down his new burrow, ran along to the front door, and darted off toward home.
When he was almost there he saw a little brown bird sitting on a bush, and the bird seemed calling to him.
"Wait a minute, rabbit," said the bird. "Why are you in such a hurry?"
"Because I saw such a dreadful animal," was Sammie"s reply, and he told about the deer.
"Pooh! Deer are very nice creatures indeed," said the bird. "I used to know one, and I used to perch on his horns. But what I stopped to ask you about was whether you know of a nice nest which I could rent for this spring. You see, I have come up from the South a little earlier than usual, and I can"t find the nest I had last year. It was in a little wooden house that a nice man built for me, but the wind has blown it down. I didn"t know but what you might have seen a little nest somewhere."
"No," said Sammie, "I haven"t. I am very sorry."