the long June
evenings the Boy liked to go there after tea to play. He took the
Velveteen Rabbit with him, and before he wandered off to pick flowers,
or play at brigands among the trees, he always made the Rabbit a
little nest somewhere among the bracken, where he would be quite cosy,
for he was a kind-hearted little boy and he liked Bunny to be
comfortable. One evening, while the Rabbit was lying there alone,
watching the ants that ran to and fro between his velvet paws in the
grass, he saw two strange beings creep out of the tall bracken near
him.

They were rabbits like himself, but quite furry and brand-new. They
must have been very well made, for their seams didn't show at all, and
they changed shape in a queer way when they moved; one minute they
were long and thin and the next minute fat and bunchy, instead of
always staying the same like he did. Their feet padded softly on the
ground, and they crept quite close to him, twitching their noses,
while the Rabbit stared hard to see which side the clockwork stuck
out, for he knew that people who jump generally have something to wind
them up. But he couldn't see it. They were evidently a new kind of
rabbit altogether.

Summer Days

They stared at him, and the little Rabbit stared back. And all the
time their noses twitched.

"Why don't you get up and play with us?" one of them asked.

"I don't feel like it," said the Rabbit, for he didn't want to explain
that he had no clockwork.

"Ho!" said the furry rabbit. "It's as easy as anything," And he gave a
big hop sideways and stood on his hind legs.

"I don't believe you can!" he said.

"I can!" said the little Rabbit. "I can jump higher than anything!" He
meant when the Boy threw him, but of course he didn't want to say so.

"Can you hop on your hind legs?" asked the furry rabbit.

That was a dreadful question, for the Velveteen Rabbit had no hind
legs at all! The back of him was made all in one piece, like a
pincushion. He sat still in the bracken, and hoped that the other
rabbits wouldn't notice.

"I don't want to!" he said again.

But the wild rabbits have very sharp eyes. And this one stretched out
his neck and looked.

"He hasn't got any hind legs!" he called out. "Fancy a rabbit without
any hind legs!" And he began to laugh.

"I have!" cried the little Rabbit. "I have got hind legs! I am sitting
on them!"

"Then stretch them out and show me, like this!" said the wild