“I guess we could if you wanted to,” he said.  “Your mother was always a great hand for pet rabbits and I believe that the very house I once built for her, is up in the loft to this day.  Let’s cover them over again and go find it.”

“Will they stay here while we’re gone?” asked Mary Jane as he tenderly laid the leaves back over the little creatures.

“They will till their mother gets a chance to take them away,” answered Grandfather.  “If she thinks we’ll hurt them, she’ll carry them to some other hiding place.  But if we hurry, we’ll get them first.”

“Won’t she know that we’ll take good care of them?” asked Mary Jane.

“She won’t know it at first,” replied Grandfather, “but she’ll soon find out.  We’ll fix them up in a comfortable box and they’ll be as safe and happy and perhaps even better fed than if they’d stayed out here in the woods where stray dogs might hurt them.  Come on, now, Pussy; let’s hurry for the box.”

Mary Jane took hold of his hand again and they hurried back through the pasture and the cornfield to the barn.

It didn’t take Grandfather long to find the little rabbit house he had made for Mary Jane’s mother years ago.  “The box part is good as new,” he said, “and I’ll get some fresh screening from the attic to cover over this open side.”

Mary Jane trotted along beside him up to the mysterious, big attic at the top of the house, where, from a dark corner, he pulled a strip of new wire screen.  They took it down to the back porch where he had left the box and in less than half an hour he had the new home all ready for the rabbits.

Of course Grandmother heard them working around and came to see what was going on.

“Oh, the cunningest bunnies, five of them, we found,” Mary Jane told her, “little and soft and gray and white just like the Easter bunnies in the store, and we’re going to bring them up to your house to live so not any bad dogs will hurt them and so I can feed them.”

“Won’t that be fun,” said Grandmother approvingly, “but how are you going to carry them?”

Mary Jane stared at her grandmother thoughtfully.  “Will they go in my hand?”

“Carry five?” asked Grandmother.  “I thought you said five.  You couldn’t get that many in your hand.”

“No-o-o, I ’spect I couldn’t,” said Mary Jane.  “How’ll I do it?”

“Suppose we fix a basket,” suggested Grandmother, “then they would be safe and comfortable while they made the journey.”

Mary Jane thought that a wonderful idea and she helped Grandmother hunt up a basket from the storeroom and fold a soft old cloth to line it.  By the time they had it all ready, Grandfather had the new home finished and he and Mary Jane set out for the woods to get their new family.

Just before they got to the nest they saw the mother rabbit dart away.  Such a pretty little thing she was, all soft gray except her tiny stub of a tail which was snow white.  She hurried away so quickly Mary Jane hardly got more than a glance at her before she was out of sight behind a log.