n her tiny subjects
Took fright and ran off, too,
And now I never see them more
A-dancing near my old stump door."

"That's too bad," said the little rabbit, for he was so interested in
what the old woodchuck was saying that he had forgotten all about his
lollypop and had dropped it on the floor.

And in the next story he'll pick up his lollypop and eat it, because I
hate to have him lose it, don't you?

STORY XXXVII.

BILLY BUNNY AND LITTLE PEEWEE.

Let me stop for a moment and think where I left off last night. Oh,
now I remember. Billy Bunny was in the old woodchuck hollow stump, and
it was raining.

Oh, my, yes. Cats and dogs, as they say in grown-ups' stories, so
we'll say kittens and puppies. Well, after a while the rain stopped
and the little rabbit said good-by and hopped away, and pretty soon,
not very long, a little bird began to sing:

"Down the shady Forest Trail,
O'er the hill and through the vale,
Billy Bunny hops along
With a whistle and a song.
And if you have never heard
A rabbit whistle like a bird,
You must ask each little rabbit
If he has the whistling habit."

"Who's singing?" asked Billy Bunny, and he took his silver policeman's
whistle out of his knapsack and blew on it so hard that the little
bird began to cry:

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! You will whistle my ear off!" And then, of
course, the little rabbit stopped, for he didn't want to hurt that
dear little bird. No sireemam.

"Who are you?" he asked, and the little bird replied: "I'm Peewee, the
littlest bird in the whole Friendly Forest."

"What do you look like?" said the little rabbit, curiously, gazing
here and there and everywhere and behind a tree and under a stone.
"I've never seen a Peewee."

And then that little bird flew down from a tree and Billy Bunny saw
the tiniest little bird he had ever seen. Why, it wasn't much larger
than a butterfly.

"Goodness, but you're small," said Billy Bunny. "Are you so small that
you don't like lollypops?"

Of course, the little bird said no, and so would you, no matter how
small you were, but when she tried to fly away with the lollypop, she
couldn't. No sireemam. Wasn't that too bad? So the little rabbit gave
her some sweet cracker crumbs instead, and after that he hopped away
looking for another adventure.

And it wasn't long before he had one. For, just as he was hopping
across a fallen log that made a narrow bridge