Cabbage Street he turned off Lettuce Avenue and into the Shady Forest. By and by, after a while, he reached the dear Old Bramble Patch.

“I’ll be out in just a minute!” shouted Little Jack Rabbit in answer to the three honks of the Luckymobile horn. “I’ve almost finished polishing the front door knob.”

“Don’t hurry!” replied the old gentleman rabbit, hopping around to the kitchen where Lady Love, the little rabbit’s mother, was wiping the dishes.

“Here comes Uncle Lucky!” chirped the little Black Cricket from the woodbox by the kitchen stove.

“Here comes Uncle Lucky!” sang the Three Little Grasshoppers, while the pretty Canary from her gold cage twittered a song of welcome and the Hollyhocks nodded their heads as the old gentleman rabbit hopped up on the little back porch.

Lady Love pushed forward the big rocking chair and when the old gentleman bunny was comfortably seated, handed him a cup of turnip tea.

“Ah, me!” he sighed, though smiling at Lady Love: "When I was young and frisky
   Way back in ’63,
   A pretty little bunny girl
   Gave me a cup of tea," and taking a blue silk polkadot handkerchief out of his coat-tail pocket, dear kind Uncle Lucky wiped a tear from his left eye.

Pretty soon when Little Jack Rabbit had finished polishing the front door knob, he and Uncle Lucky hopped out to the Luckymobile and drove away across the Sunny Meadow, up the Old Cow Path and over the hill-top, to the Shady Forest.

Everything was going along so nicely and Billy Breeze was whistling such a merry tune in the treetops when, all of a sudden, just like that, quick as the bills on the first of the month, something happened. Isn’t it too bad that unpleasant things always happen when these two dear little rabbits are enjoying themselves?

Before Uncle Lucky could stop the Luckymobile it ran straight into a big log that lay across the Shady Forest Path, and out went the two little bunnies. No sooner had they picked themselves up than whom should they see peeping around a tree, but Mr. Wicked Wolf.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” whispered Little Jack Rabbit, “let’s turn back.”

But, goodness gracious me! who was standing not far behind them, but Danny Fox!

“Worse and worse,” sighed poor dear Uncle Lucky, hopping off sideways when, all of a sudden, Old Man Weasel crept from behind a stone.

 Prev. P 16/158 next