A Collection of Beatrix Potter StoriesPotter, Beatrix
General
A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories
Potter, Beatrix
Animals -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories, English; Short stories
And everything was broken, except the mantelpiece and the kitchen
fender. The crockery was smashed to atoms.
The chairs were broken, and the window, and the clock fell with a crash,
and there were handfuls of Mr. Tod's sandy whiskers.
The vases fell off the mantelpiece, the canisters fell off the shelf;
the kettle fell off the hob. Tommy Brock put his foot in a jar of
raspberry Jam.
And the boiling water out of the kettle fell upon the tail of Mr. Tod.
When the kettle fell, Tommy Brock, who was still grinning, happened to
be uppermost; and he rolled Mr. Tod over and over like a log, out at the
door.
Then the snarling and worrying went on outside; and they rolled over the
bank, and down hill, bumping over the rocks. There will never be any
love lost between Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod.
As soon as the coast was clear Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny came out
of the bushes--
"Now for it! Run in, Cousin Benjamin! Run in and get them while I watch
at the door."
But Benjamin was frightened--
"Oh; oh! they are coming back!"
"No they are not."
"Yes they are!"
"What dreadful bad language! I think they have fallen down the stone
quarry."
Still Benjamin hesitated, and Peter kept pushing him--
"Be quick, it's all right. Shut the oven door, Cousin Benjamin, so that
he won't miss them."
Decidedly there were lively doings in Mr. Tod's kitchen!
At home in the rabbit hole, things had not been quite comfortable.
After quarrelling at supper, Flopsy and old Mr. Bouncer had passed a
sleepless night, and quarrelled again at breakfast. Old Mr. Bouncer
could no longer deny that he had invited company into the rabbit hole;
but he refused to reply to the questions and reproaches of Flopsy. The
day passed heavily.
Old Mr. Bouncer, very sulky, was huddled up in a corner, barricaded with
a chair. Flopsy had taken away his pipe and hidden the tobacco. She had
been having a complete turn out and spring-cleaning, to relieve her
feelings. She had just finished. Old Mr. Bouncer, behind his chair, was
wondering anxiously what she would do next.
In Mr. Tod's kitchen, amongst the wreckage, Benjamin Bunny picked his
way to the oven nervously, through a thick cloud of dust. He opened the
oven door, felt inside, and found something warm and wriggling. He
lifted it out carefully, and rejoined Peter Rabbit.
"I've got them! Can we get away? Shall we hide, Cousin Peter?"
Peter pricked his ears; distant sounds of fighting still echoed in the
wood.
Five minutes afterwards two breathless rabbits came scuttering away down
Bull Banks, half carrying half dragging a sack between them, bumpetty
bump over the grass. They reached home safely and burst into the rabbit
hole.
Great was old Mr. Bouncer's relief and Flopsy's joy when Peter and
Benjamin arrived in triumph with the young family. The rabbit-babies
were rather tumbled and very hungry; they were fed and put to bed. They
soon recovered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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