“With the most shamefaced air that you can imagine, little Mr. Mouse jumped again.  Old Mother Nature watched him closely.  ‘Come here to me,’ said she as he scrambled to his feet after his tumble.  ’It’s all my fault,’ said she kindly, as he obeyed her.  ’It was very stupid of me.  What you need is a long tail to balance you on a long jump.  That short tail is all right for short jumps, but it won’t do for long jumps.  It won’t do at all.  I should have thought of that when I made your legs long.’

“She reached down and took hold of the tip of that little short tail and drew it out until it was long, almost twice as long as the body of little Mr. Mouse.  ‘Now jump,’ she commanded, ’and jump with all your might.’

“A little fearfully but with the beginning of a little hope Mr. Mouse jumped with all his might.  Away he sailed straight and true and landed lightly on his feet so far from where he had left the ground that he could hardly believe his own eyes as he looked back.  Mother Nature was smiling.

“’There you are, Mr. Limberheels.  I guess that that will make you quite the most wonderful jumper of all my children,’ said she.

“And so it was that little Mr. Mouse, all at one time, became possessed of a long tail, a name, and the ability to out jump all his neighbors,” concluded Danny Meadow Mouse.  “Do you know,” he added wistfully, “sometimes I envy my cousin Limberheels.”

“I envy him myself,” declared Peter.

XI

WHERE OLD MR. GOBBLER GOT THE STRUTTING HABIT

Peter Rabbit never will forget the first time he saw Big Tom Gobbler.  It was very early one spring morning, when Peter was not yet old enough to have made the acquaintance of all the people who live in the Green Forest, and when it seemed as if the chief thing in life with him was to satisfy his curiosity about the ways of the Great World.  Several times when he had been hopping along, lipperty-lipperty-lip, through the Green Forest just after sun-up, he had heard a strange sound quite unlike any other of all the many sounds his long ears had learned to know.  He knew that it was the voice of some one who lived in the Green Forest, but though he had looked and looked he had been unable to discover the owner of that voice.

On this particular morning Peter happened to be sitting under some ferns on the edge of a little open space among the trees when again he heard that strange voice.  It seemed to come from somewhere back in the woods in the very direction from which he had just come.  “Gobble-obble-obble!” said the voice, and again a moment later “Gobble-obble-obble!”

Peter was just preparing to go back to see if he could find the owner of that voice when the noise of great wings caused him to look up just in time to see a bigger bird than he ever had even dreamed of coming swiftly over the tree-tops.  With his eyes popping out and his mouth wide open with astonishment, Peter saw the great bird set its wings and sail down into the little opening on the edge of which Peter was sitting.  The instant this great bird was on the ground, he stood as still as if he were made of stone, his long neck stretched up.  Only the shine of a pair of the sharpest eyes Peter ever had seen showed that he was alive.