The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix PotterPotter, Beatrix
General
The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter
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 cannisters 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 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 quarreling 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, amidst 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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