BILLY
BUNNY ADVENTURES 3
BILLY BUNNY AND PHOTOGRAPHER CRANE
You remember in the last story Daddy Fox was peeping in through the window just as Billy Bunny was having his picture taken, don’t you?
Well, no sooner did the little rabbit see him than he hopped quicker than a lightning bug to the door and closed it, and the Photographer Crane pulled down the window shade to make it dark inside so that Daddy Fox couldn’t see them.
After that he stuffed the fireplace full of sofa cushions for fear the crafty fox might slide down the chimney. But, oh dear me! he forgot all about the skylights—the windows in the roof, you know, and the next moment down through the ceiling dropped Daddy Fox.
Oh, my! What a scramble there was in that photo parlor. The Crane flew up on the mantelpiece and the little rabbit crept into the waste basket and pulled a photograph album on top of him.
And, of course, it was so dark that Daddy Fox didn’t see them do all this, so he had to play hide-and-seek and there was nobody to call out, “You’re getting hotter and hotter” when he stood near the mantelpiece, nor “You’re burning up!” when he passed close to the waste paper basket, so after a while he sat down on a pincushion (excuse me, I mean a sofa cushion), and listened with both ears cocked up.
But the Crane never breathed and Billy Bunny held his breath, so by and by Daddy Fox started to hunt around the room again. First he pulled all the cushions out of the fireplace and then he pulled up the shades and unlocked the front door.
And this was very foolish of him, for he should have known that the Crane and the little rabbit hadn’t had time to get out. Then he went out on the little porch and peeped into the woodbox, and while he was doing that the Crane flew down the mantelpiece and locked the door.
And then he pulled the strings to close the skylight and stuffed the cushions back into the fireplace, and lifted the album off the little rabbit, for it was so full of pictures of fat people that it was dreadfully heavy.
After this Billy Bunny opened his knapsack and took out his gun and peeked out through a hole in the window shade. And right there by the window stood the dreadful fox trying to open it. Bang! went the little rabbit’s gun and the cork hit the fox on the tip of his nose and made him sneeze so badly that he had to run into the woods to find his handkerchief.
And he hunted all day long for it, and when evening came he remembered he had sent it to the laundry, so he had to go out and buy one at the three and one cent store.
Of course, Billy Bunny didn’t have any more pictures taken that day. He hopped home as fast as he could, and the Crane telephoned down to the police station and told them to send up a man to guard the studio, and if the Twinkle Twinkle Star to-night sings me to sleep, I’ll tell you another story of Billy Bunny and the sheep.
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