Bumper, The White Rabbit | Page 2

Bobby, Buster, White
Tail and their friends as well as to thousands of other little readers who
could not share them with us. So these books of Twilight Animal
Stories are dedicated to all little boys and girls who love wild animals.
All others are forbidden to read them! They wouldn't understand them
if they did.
So come out into the woods with me, and let us listen and watch, and I
promise you it will be worth while.
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BUMPER THE WHITE RABBIT
STORY I
WHERE BUMPER CAME FROM
There was once an old woman who had so many rabbits that she hardly
knew what to do. They ate her out of house and home, and kept the
cupboard so bare she often had to go to bed hungry. But none of the
rabbits suffered this way. They all had their supper, and their breakfast,
too, even if there wasn't a crust left in the old woman's cupboard.
There were big rabbits and little rabbits; lean ones and fat ones;
comical little youngsters who played pranks upon their elders, and staid,
serious old ones who never laughed or smiled the livelong day; boy
rabbits and girl rabbits, mother rabbits and father rabbits, and goodness
knows how many aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, cousins, second
cousins and distant relatives-in-law! They all lived under one big roof
in the backyard of the good old woman who kept them, and they had
such jolly times together that it seemed a shame to separate them.
But once every day the old woman chose several of her pets, and
carried them away in a basket to a certain street corner of the city
where she offered them for sale. She was dreadfully poor, and often
when she returned home at night, counting her money, she would
murmur: "It's a cabbage for them or a loaf of bread for myself. I can't
get both."
She didn't always get the loaf of bread, but the rabbits always had their
cabbage. They were all pink-eyed, white rabbits, and people were
willing to pay good prices for them. But the whitest and pinkest-eyed
of them all was Bumper, a tiny rabbit when he was born, and not very
big when the old woman took him away on his first trip to the street
corner. Bumper had never seen so many people before, and he was a
little shy and frightened at first; but Jimsy and Wheedles, his brothers,
laughed at his fears, and told him not to mind.
After that he plucked up courage, and when a little girl suddenly ran

out of the crowd and picked him up in her arms, he tried not to be
afraid. "Oh, you sweet little thing!" the girl exclaimed, pinching his
ears softly. "Where did you come from, and where did you get those
pink eyes and those long, fluffy ears?"
Then the girl kissed Bumper and rubbed his nose against her soft, fresh
young cheek; but when the old lady approached, all smiles, and said,
"Want him, dear?" she put him down in the basket again.
"Want him? Of course, I want him!" she replied a little scornfully. "But
I can't buy him to-day. I spent all my birthday money on candies and
cakes. Take him now before I steal him and run away."
She was a pretty girl, with red hair, a dimple in her chin, and one big
freckle on the end of her nose; but her eyes were blue, and they made
Bumper think of the sky which he could see through a hole in the roof
of his house. I suppose it was because he had pink eyes that he thought
blue was so becoming to little girls.
That night when he got home, Bumper was bursting with excitement.
The day's experience was enough to cause this, but the words of the
little girl who had spent all of her birthday money for candies and cakes
were fresh in his mind. The first thing he did when he got in his box
was to pester his mother with so many questions that she had hard work
answering them.
"A little girl asked me where I came from, mother, and I couldn't
answer her. Where did I come from?"
"Why, dear, from a snowball, of course. How else could you be so
white?"
"And have I pink eyes?" That was the little girl's second question.
"What color did you think they were?" asked Bumper's mother, smiling.
"Look at the eyes of your brothers and sisters."
Bumper looked in Jimsy's and Wheedle's eyes, and saw they were pink,

but he was still doubtful. "But mine," he added, "are you sure they're
pink? They might be green or yellow--"
Mother rabbit laughed and hopped over to a basin of water which the
good