right for short jumps, but it won't do for long jumps. It
won't do at all. I should have thought of that when I made your legs
long.'

"She reached down and took hold of the tip of that little short tail and
drew it out until it was long, almost twice as long as the body of
little Mr. Mouse. 'Now jump,' she commanded, 'and jump with all your
might.'

"A little fearfully but with the beginning of a little hope Mr. Mouse
jumped with all his might. Away he sailed straight and true and landed
lightly on his feet so far from where he had left the ground that he
could hardly believe his own eyes as he looked back. Mother Nature was
smiling.

"'There you are, Mr. Limberheels. I guess that that will make you quite
the most wonderful jumper of all my children,' said she.

"And so it was that little Mr. Mouse, all at one time, became possessed
of a long tail, a name, and the ability to out jump all his neighbors,"
concluded Danny Meadow Mouse. "Do you know," he added wistfully,
"sometimes I envy my cousin Limberheels."

"I envy him myself," declared Peter.

XI

WHERE OLD MR. GOBBLER GOT THE STRUTTING HABIT

Peter Rabbit never will forget the first time he saw Big Tom Gobbler. It
was very early one spring morning, when Peter was not yet old enough to
have made the acquaintance of all the people who live in the Green
Forest, and when it seemed as if the chief thing in life with him was to
satisfy his curiosity about the ways of the Great World. Several times
when he had been hopping along, lipperty-lipperty-lip, through the Green
Forest just after sun-up, he had heard a strange sound quite unlike any
other of all the many sounds his long ears had learned to know. He knew
that it was the voice of some one who lived in the Green Forest, but
though he had looked and looked he had been unable to discover the owner
of that voice.

On this particular morning Peter happened to be sitting under some ferns
on the edge of a little open space among the trees when again he heard
that strange voice. It seemed to come from somewhere back in the woods
in the very direction from which he had just come. "Gobble-obble-obble!"
said the voice, and again a moment later "Gobble-obble-obble!"

Peter was just preparing to go back to see if he could find the owner of
that voice when the noise of great wings caused him to look up just in
time to see a bigger bird than he ever had even dreamed of coming
swiftly over the tree-tops. With