BILLY BUNNY
STORY XXXII.
BILLY BUNNY AND THE LOST RING.
Something's
going to happen;
I feel it in the air.
But what it is you soon shall know,
So hold your breath and stare.
You remember in the last story I told you about Billy Bunny's birthday party and promised to tell you who found the little gold ring in the frosted cake.
Well, just as the little rabbit said, "I've found it!" Daddy Fox sprang from behind a bush and grabbed the piece of cake right out of the little rabbit's paw.
And then he jumped over the Luckymobile and ran off to his den to give it to Slyboots or Bushy Tail, his two little sons, you know, but which one got it I can't remember, for everybody was so excited that they forgot to ask the naughty old fox before he got away.
"That's too bad," said kind Uncle Lucky; "I'll have to get you another one," so he said good-by to everybody and took Billy Bunny down to the 3 and 10 cents store, where they bought a lovely gold ring with a big ruby in it. Wasn't that nice?
And then they came back to the woods, but everybody had gone home and there was no more birthday cake anywhere to be seen, not even a little piece of candle.
"Well, what shall we do now?" said the kind old gentleman rabbit, and he poured some lettuce oil into the cabaret and took out his blue polka-dot handkerchief and wiped his ear, and then he dusted off his old wedding stovepipe hat and honked the automobile horn and blew up a tire and turned a cushion upside down to hide a grease spot. And after that he put on his goggles and started off again, and by and by, not so very long, they came to a signpost on which was written:
"Which road shall I take?"
"Goodness, gracious me!" exclaimed the old gentleman rabbit, "what's the matter with my goggles?" and he took them off and looked at the signpost again.
"It says the same old thing," he said with a sigh, and he took off his old wedding stovepipe hat and dusted the top, and after he had put it on his head again he heard a voice saying:
"Take
the road that leads to the left,
And not the one to the right,
For if you don't you will get left
And you won't get home till night."
"Who's speaking?" said Billy Bunny. And the reason he hadn't said anything before was because he had been sound asleep.
And then who should come out from behind that funny signpost but a great roaring bull with two horns and about ten feet long and big red, snorting nostrils.
"Don't let us disturb you," which means bother or something like that, said Uncle Lucky, and he honked the horn with all his might, and, would you believe it, the bull was so frightened that he ran away and never stopped till he got home and covered himself with the crazy quilt on his old four-poster bed.
