He took some minutes to collect his wits, then twisted upright, and, with frightened eyes, sought guidance. [Illustration] But for the woolscrap all would have been well. Mother Rabbit was close at hand, feeding his brothers with small sprigs of green. Father Rabbit was close too. The sight of his lost wife had softened him. He purred approval. He licked the children's noses. Assuredly the lost would have been found, but for the woolscrap. The woolscrap fluttered, wind-borne, down the slope, and Bunny Rabbit nature-taught, went after it. It led him far. It caught on brambles and then flicked away. It plunged in little valleys. It mounted little hills. It bobbed and jerked and twisted, and Bunny Rabbit, panting hard, pursued. At last he caught it, checked upon a grass-stem, and--_it wasn't Mother after all_! [Illustration: It wasn't Mother after all!] Bunny Rabbit sat down bewildered. He was hot with running; his ears were prickly, his coat was rumpled. He combed his ears out, one by one, brushed down his face, and nibbled all the fur that he could reach. Then he felt better. [Illustration: HE COMBED HIS EARS OUT, ONE BY ONE] The morning breeze gained appetite and sent the woolscrap once more on its travels. Bunny Rabbit took no heed of it--he watched and heard the awakening of the wood. Bird notes, that in the burrow had been restful, now screamed and whistled in his ear. Out from the shelter-side of leaves, out from the heart of flowers, out from the grass-stems and from earth itself, came whirring, humming, buzzing insects. In this new myriad-peopled world there seemed small room for loneliness. A red mouse bobbed up from his hole, stared at him curiously, then whisked about and vanished. Bright eyes bejewelled the grass-tufts. Here a flick-footed lizard, here a slow-trailing blindworm, here a squat toad. The day-moths woke and flitted leaf to leaf. The bee-fly clambered up the thyme, poised hovering, vanished slantwise, and vanishing, reappeared. [Illustration] This was full entertainment, and Bunny Rabbit stared round-eyed. He stared till hunger gripped him. His brothers, a bare hundred yards away, already had acquired the art of nibbling. He had no teacher, and no wits by which to teach himself. So, though food lay on every side, he starved. He felt a craving he had never known; a tightening of his fluffy body; an ache for Mother. Mother would set things straight for him, but where to find her was beyond his reasoning. [Illustration] He wandered aimlessly this way and that; he nosed the bushes aimlessly; he stepped on Berus the Adder, because to him an adder, neatly coiled, was merely speckled ground. Berus the Adder, though infuriate, forebore to strike. Venom is far too precious to be squandered, and baby rabbits are too large to swallow. He swayed his ugly head, and slowly, very slowly, he stretched forward. This was enough for Bunny Rabbit, who spun about and left the wind behind.