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Snubby Nose and Tippy Toes danced out of their hiding places and cried, "Hurrah for the Circus Cotton-Tails! They have formed a real little Circus!" There was the band wagon. There were the elephants and camels. There were the animals in cages. The Circus Cotton-Tails cried, "Hurrah, hurrah! Here are Snubby Nose and Tippy Toes. Come and join the Big Parade."
Mocking birds sang from the topmost twig of cedars; doves cooed in the pines; sparrow hawks sailed low over the open grassy patches. Desert primroses showed their rounded pink clusters in sunny places, and here and there burned the carmine of Indian paint-brush. Jack rabbits and cotton-tails bounded and scampered away through the sage. The desert had life and color and movement this June day.
Bunny said, "I suppose we shall have no visitors for some time now." "Don't be too sure of that," said a gruff old voice, "Here I am standing now." There stood Grandpa Grumbles in the doorway. He had never looked so happy in all his life. He struck the floor fiercely with his green cotton umbrella and said, "The Circus Cotton-Tails will come, A-rat-a-tat, just hear the drum."
A pair of cotton-tails bobbed from one thicket to another in wildest terror as he came breaking through. A trout, floating in a rocky basin of the brook, fled with a dexterous flip of fin and tail to the protecting shelter of an overhanging root, as the placid pool was agitated by the passage of an enemy, following the course of the stream as the path of least resistance.
Only when leaves fall and the light is low and slant, one sees the long clean flanks of the jackrabbits, leaping like small deer, and of late afternoons little cotton-tails scamper in the runways. But the most one sees of the burrowers, gophers, and mice is the fresh earthwork of their newly opened doors, or the pitiful small shreds the butcher-bird hangs on spiny shrubs.
"Snubby Nose, Tippy Toes," repeated Bunny and Susan over and over as they warmed their paws by the fire. By and by Grandpa Grumbles said, talking very fast, "Suppose there were two little Cotton-Tails, one named Snubby Nose, and one named Tippy Toes, suppose just suppose they looked as much alike as two peas."
Bunny and Susan listened. Sure enough, they heard the "rat-a-tat," of a drum. Soon they heard the Lion roar in his cage. They all went out as fast as they could. There came the Circus Cotton-Tails on parade! Snubby Nose and Tippy Toes danced in front beating a drum. Bunny and Susan and Grandpa Grumbles cried, "Hurrah, hurrah, for the Big Parade!"
They all cried, "Give three cheers, away we go, The Circus Cotton-Tails, ho, ho!" The merry-go-round would not start. They all got out to see what was the matter. Then the most surprising thing happened! Doctor Cotton-Tail jumped out from under the merry-go-round and said, "A-riding, too, I'd like to go, Though I may take a nap or so." Grandpa Grumbles said cheerfully,
"Will it go?" asked Bunny and Susan under their breath. Grandpa Grumbles was the first to get in. He cried, "I'm the first to get inside, Come one and all and have a ride." Susan said, "Oh, dear! I have lost my spectacles." It took the Circus Cotton-Tails one hour and sixteen minutes to find Susan's spectacles. There they were safe and sound upon her forehead all the time!
During the first weeks of the conflict, the "cotton-tails," always so numerous on our estate, were simply terrified by the booming of the guns. If even the distant bombardment assumed any importance, they would disappear below ground completely, for days at a time. My old foxhound was quite disconcerted.
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