THE POLICEMAN DOG
Now, I hated to end my last story without telling you what happened to the Bunnysnowbile which the little rabbits left upside down beside the old hollow stump where Mr. Wicked Wolf was caught fast, you remember.
But you see I didn’t have room, and where one doesn’t have room one must leave a lot of things to the im-ag-in-ation, which means “make-believe,” you know.
Well, at about 14 o’clock that very night Uncle John Hare heard the big bell on the Bunnysnowbile ringing like everything. So he pushed up the window and stuck out his head, and asked:
“Is that my dear old snowbile?”
“It certainly is,” said a voice, and then the lamps on the Bunnysnowbile grew so bright that the old gentleman rabbit could see who was sitting on the seat. And who do you think it was?
You can have three guesses and another one if you guess right. It was the Policeman Dog. Yes, sir! There he sat as fine as you please, with his club on his lap and his big silver badge on his coat.
“It’s very kind of you to bring back my Bunnysnowbile,” said Uncle John Hare, and then he pulled his head in and went down stairs and showed the Policeman Dog how to put the snow car into the stable without waking up the Weathercock, who wasn’t asleep, anyway, but just minded his own business like a well-behaved iron rooster.
And then Lady Love opened the kitchendoor and asked the Policeman Dog to come in and have a hot cup of carrot tea, and after a while he said good-by and went home to his wife and seventeen children.
By and by the little rabbit said to his kind Uncle: “Let’s go out on the Sunny Meadow and dance in the moonlight.”
But the old gentleman rabbit said no. He had a slight touch of rheumatism in his left hind toe and wasn’t going to take any chances. No, sireemam.
He wasn’t going to have plumbago, ammonia or anything else just for the sake of dancing, and I don’t blame him either.
So everybody went to bed, and when Mr. Merry Sun woke up the next morning he had a hard time waking up Mr. John Hare, for the old gentleman rabbit was so sound asleep that if Lady Love hadn’t rung thebreakfast bell right over his head he might have slept on until to-morrow’s story.
Well, after breakfast, as Little Jack Rabbit looked over the paper, what do you suppose he saw? Why, a notice that Mr. Wicked Wolf had been found with his head caught in an old hollow stump and that Old Man Weasel had gone home to get his axe.
But when he had come back, Mr. Wicked Wolf had already pulled the stump right out of the ground and had gone home with it on his head and it had taken his wife two hours and eighty-five minutes to get it off.
“Gracious me!” exclaimed Lady Love. “Did you ever hear of such a thing!” And then she opened the kitchen door and peeked out. But she closed it mighty quickly, for she didn’t wish Uncle John Hare to catch cold in his left hind toe.