r at once to claim a dance with the strange lady,
who was really Fatty Coon--only Tommy didn't know it.

As soon as everyone was ready, Jimmy Rabbit climbed on top of a
toadstool and made a speech.

"The new dance," he said, "will be like this: Everybody must be
blindfolded." So every dancer pulled out his pocket-handkerchief and
tied it over his eyes. "The new dance will be _without_ music," Jimmy
added. "You will dance until the music _begins_, instead of dancing
until it _stops_."

Everyone said that that was a queer sort of dance. But Jimmy Rabbit paid
no attention to such remarks.

"All ready!" he called. "One, two, three--dance!" he cried in a loud
voice.

Among all that crowd, Jimmy Rabbit was the only one who was not
blindfolded. But no one else knew that, for nobody could see him--except
the musicians. And as soon as Jimmy whispered something to them they
tucked their corn-stalk fiddles under their arms and ran away.

But everybody kept dancing--because, you remember, it was to be a dance
without music. Jimmy Rabbit had said that they weren't to stop dancing
till the music began. And with the fiddlers gone, you might think they'd
be dancing yet.

But it was not so.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: 18 A Dance Without Music]

18

A Dance Without Music

As soon as Tommy Fox began to dance with the strange lady (she was
really Fatty Coon, you know), he saw very quickly that she was not a
good dancer at all. She kept stepping on Tommy's feet, and tripping him.
And Tommy kept wishing that the music would begin, so he could stop
dancing. You remember that Jimmy Rabbit had said that this was to be a
dance _without_ music, and that everybody had to be blindfolded, too.

At first, Tommy Fox and his partner kept bumping into other dancers.
That was natural enough, too, because how could anyone see, with a
pocket-handkerchief tied over his eyes?

After a while Tommy noticed that they bumped into fewer and fewer
people, until at last they never ran into any others at all. But he
never stopped to wonder at that. He was only glad that it was so.

Being blindfolded, he had not seen what was going on. But Jimmy Rabbit
was very busy. He kept going up to all the rabbit dancers, and
whispering to them, and telling them to take their pocket-handkerchiefs
off their eyes and run away, because Tommy Fox and Fatty Coon had come
to the Rabbits' Ball, without being invited. So two by two the dancers
stole off,