Near the house where they lived there was a wood, and in 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 rabbit.  And he began to whirl round and dance, till the little Rabbit got quite dizzy.

“I don’t like dancing,” he said.  “I’d rather sit still!”

But all the while he was longing to dance, for a funny new tickly feeling ran through him, and he felt he would give anything in the world to be able to jump about like these rabbits did.