“I've got to sleep somewhere,” said Bobby, rubbing his eyes and yawning, “and the sooner I find a place, the better. I'm so sleepy now I can hardly keep my eyes open. Hello, there's a great big log over there! If it is hollow, it will be just the place for me.”

 

He marched straight over to the old log. It was big, very big, and to Bobby's great joy it was hollow, with an opening at one end. He was just going to crawl in, when Peter Rabbit popped out from behind a tree.

 

“Hello, Bobby Coon!” cried Peter joyously². “Where have you been? I was over where you used to live and found your house gone, and I was afraid something dreadful had happened to you. What did happen, and where have you been?”

 

Now, tired and sleepy as he was, Bobby had to stop and talk for a few minutes. You see, Peter was the first of his friends Bobby had met to whom he could tell all the wonderful things that had happened to him, and he was fairly aching to tell some one. So he sat down and told Peter how his hollow tree had been cut down, and how his leg had been broken, and how Farmer Brown's boy had taken him home and fixed³ that leg so that Old Mother Nature could make it as well and sound as ever, and how Farmer Brown's boy had brought him back to the Green Forest and set him free, and how he had been fishing all night and now was looking for a place to get a wink⁴ or two of sleep.

 

“Now, if you'll excuse me, Peter, I'm going to turn in for a nap,” Bobby ended, and started to crawl in the end of the hollow log.

 

“Oh!” cried Peter. “Oh, you mustn't go in there, Bobby!”

 

But Bobby didn't hear him, or if he did he didn't

分享到：