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"Well," said Billy, "there aren't much to tell, only that as we was going along I says to the skipper, I says, `There's a whacking great shark along yonder. "`Ay, Billy, he says, `that's a thumper, and no mistake.
He forgot these things and was so busy thinking bitterly of the things he didn't have that he forgot to use his wits and nose and ears when he reached the Old Pasture. The result was that he trotted right past Old Jed Thumper, the big gray Rabbit, who was sitting behind a little bush holding his breath.
"I'll hunt that fellow till I kill him, or drive him so far from the Old Pasture that he'll never think of coming back. I certainly will!" he said aloud, and started forth to hunt. Now it would have been better for the plans of Old Jed Thumper if he had kept them to himself instead of speaking aloud.
"Got him this time that's a fact!" cried Peterkin, hauling in the line. "He's swallowed the bait right down to his tail, I declare. Oh, what a thumper!" As the fish came struggling to the surface, we leaned forward to see it, and overbalanced the log. Peterkin threw his arms round the fish's neck, and in another instant we were all floundering in the water.
Fred and Philip both ran up to him, and sure enough he seemed to have got hold of a "thumper," as he called it, for his line was running about backwards and forwards through the water, while the willow wand which served him for a rod was bent half double. "Pull him to the side, and I'll get hold of the line," said Philip.
I didn't lay my eye on the fellow of it since, sure enough, and I'm now an ould man, though I was then a young one. Why there was a pudding boiled in the end of a sack; and troth it was a thumper, only for the straws for you see, when they were making it, they had to draw long straws acrass in order to keep, it from falling asunder a fine plan it is, too.
"How spiteful the world be!" said Mrs. Lobkins, after a pause, "'specially if a 'oman keeps a fashionable sort of a public! When Judith died, Joe, the dog's-meat man, said I war all the better for it, and that she left I a treasure to bring up the urchin. One would think a thumper makes a man richer, 'cause why? Every man thumps!
"My, I must be a sight!" he thought, "I wonder how I do look, anyway. I must hunt up a looking-glass and find out." Now when Peter Rabbit thinks of doing a thing, he wastes very little time. It was that way now. He started at once for the bit of swamp where he had first seen the tracks of Old Jed Thumper. He still limped from the wounds made by Hooty the Owl.
"I was afraid you'd say something like that. I don't see what you've to do with that sort of thing. I don't see why you should thank me it's I who ought to thank you for listening to me: a man you know so little coming down on you with such a thumper! Of course it's a great question; I must tell you that I'd rather ask it than have it to answer myself.
Then, when Old Jed Thumper was hunting Peter so hard that he hardly had a chance to eat or sleep, had come Old Man Coyote the Wolf and given Old Jed Thumper such a fright that for a week he didn't dare poke so much as his nose out of his bull- briar castle.
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