BILLY
BUNNY ADVENTURES 14
BILLY BUNNY AND
THE BILLY GOAT
Well, it’s time now to tell about Billy Bunny and Uncle Lucky Lefthindfoot, his dear, kind, generous rabbit uncle.
Uncle Lucky put his handkerchief on his nose and his spectacles in his pocket and he climbed into the Luckymobile beside Billy Bunny and they drove away.
“Hip hurrah! Hip hurray!
I’m going to join the colors to-day.
Maybe I’ll be a soldier gay,
Or a sailor boy on the ocean spray.
It all depends what they’re going to say
When I tell them I want to join the fray.”
“Who’s singing?” asked Uncle Lucky, holding his right paw behind his left ear and wiggling his nose up and down and sideways so fast that it made a little fly dizzy to look at it. And just then they came across a Billy Goat standing outside a tent dressed in khaki with a gun over his shoulder.
“Halt! Who goes there?” cried the sentry. “Halt!” and of course Uncle Lucky put on the brakes and made the Luckymobile stop right then and there.
“Friend or foe?” asked the sentry, looking into the automobile and lifting the cushions off the seats and opening the cabaret and lighting the lamps and honking the horn, and, oh, dear me! doing anything and everything he could to annoy good, kind Uncle Lucky.
“What do you think we are?” asked Billy Bunny. “We are U. S. A. Bunnies. Don’t you make any mistake about that!”
“I beg your pardon,” said the sentry, saluting the two rabbits most respectfully, “I only wanted to make sure. These are war times, you know, and we must be on the lookout every minute of the day and every second of the night!”
And then he saluted again and turned away. And then, all of a sudden, the band began playing, but it must have been off in the woods, somewhere, for the little bunnies couldn’t see it.
Hurrah for Uncle Samuel,
King of the U. S. A.
Three cheers for the Blue,
And the Red and White, too,
And the Silver Stars, I say.
And here’s to the sailor lad in blue
And the soldier boy in brown,
From the farm and the mine,
And the big steel mills,
Or the little old home town.
