BILLY BUNNY
STORY XXIV.
BILLY BUNNY AND DANNY BILLYGOAT.
Well, my little canary bird didn't wink at me all night, as I feared it might in the last story, and my alarm clock said "good morning" to me at half-past fourteen o'clock, so I got up in time, and here is the story I wrote before I went out into the garden to eat raspberries with Robbie Redbreast.
One evening as Uncle Lucky and Billy
Bunny were driving along in the
Luckymobile, who should they come across but a little billygoat named
Danny.
He had a little beard that hung down from his chin and two little horns that stuck up from his head, and he was playing on a flute while he sat cross-legged on a stone by the roadside. And when he saw our two small friends in their machine, he began to play:
It's
not so far to the twinkle star
In the little white boat of sleep.
So list to my tune, like a breeze in June,
Where the honeysuckles creep.
Over
the sky, way up high,
In the little white boat of sleep.
Ever so far to the twinkle star
Way up in the sky blue deep.
"Where did you learn that lullaby," asked kind Uncle Lucky, brushing a tear from his eye, for he remembered just a little song his mother used to sing when he was a little boy rabbit, you know.
"I don't know," answered Danny Goat. He pulled on his goatee and smiled, and then he began again:
"Up in
the sky when the sun is high
The white cloud boats go sailing by,
And the summer breeze in the tall, tall trees
Is singing a song the whole day long.
And this is the song they sing:
We ring the bell in the cool damp dell
That grows on the lily's stalk,
We bend the ferns in the river's turns
And the tail of the great gray hawk;
And the foamy spray in the big deep bay
We blow on the great boardwalk."
"That reminds me of Atlantic City," said Uncle Lucky. "Let's drive down there and go for a swim."
"Just the thing," said the little rabbit; "I've got my bathing suit in my knapsack. I'm ready."
So off they went, and by and by they came to the seashore. But there wasn't a hotel in sight, so of course they knew they had made a mistake. They didn't care, especially Billy Bunny, for not very far from land was the big good-natured whale who had taken him for a sail a long, long time ago. "There's my friend the Whaleship!" cried the little rabbit.
And in the next story, if that whale doesn't swim away, I'll tell you something more about Billy Bunny and his kind Uncle Lucky.
