“Ah, what a fine Rabbit!  Where did you get him?” asked Rosa’s father.

“He was thrown away on a veranda of a house where I got no pennies,” she answered.  “No one wanted him, so I took him.”

“He is a fine Candy Rabbit,” said Joe, the peddler, looking at the Bunny.  “He is almost new.  I guess he came from an Easter novelty counter.  Once I sold Easter toys, but now I sell only pins and needles.  Yes, he is a fine Rabbit, Rosa.  Are you going to eat him?  He is made of candy.”

“Eat him!  Oh, no!  I am going to keep him, always!” said the little girl, hugging the Rabbit in her arms.

The Bunny liked to be hugged and petted, and, though he would rather have been in Madeline’s house, still he was glad the little organ girl liked him.

“Nobody wanted the Rabbit, so I took him,” said Rosa, and she really thought this was so.

But of course Madeline wanted her Candy Rabbit very much.  And when she and Dorothy and Mirabell came back to the veranda after their play in the sand pile and found the Sawdust Doll there and the Bunny gone, poor Madeline felt very bad indeed.  She cried, and she looked all over for her Easter toy, but he was not to be found.

At first Madeline thought perhaps her brother or one of the other boys had taken the Bunny to tie to the kite again, but Herbert said that he and his chums had not seen the toy.

Then Madeline thought perhaps Carlo, the little dog, had carried the Bunny away, as once he carried off the Sawdust Doll, but this could not have happened, as Carlo had been kept chained in his kennel all that day.

“Well, my Candy Rabbit is gone, and I wish I could find him, and I’m awful lonesome without him,” sobbed Madeline, and she was not happy even when her mother said she or Aunt Emma would buy her another.

And all the while the organ grinder’s little girl had the Candy Rabbit.  And that night, when the time came for Rosa to go to bed, she looked for a safe place to put the Easter toy.  The little girl saw the big basket of the peddler in a corner of the room.

“I’ll put the Candy Rabbit on one of the pin cushions in Uncle Joe’s basket,” said Rosa to herself.  “He can sleep there all night.  To-morrow I will make a little nest for him.”

And the Candy Rabbit was so tired after all the adventures he had met with that day that he fell asleep almost at once, and passed a very pleasant night in the basket on the pin cushion, which was stuffed with sawdust, just like Dorothy’s doll.

Peddler Joe was up early the next morning.  He was up before either his brother, Tony, or the little girl, Rosa.  Joe cooked himself some breakfast on an old oil stove, and then, taking his basket, he went out.  He did not even turn back the oilcloth cover to see that his pins, needles, cushions and other notions were all in place.  He felt sure that they were.  And of course he did not know the Candy Rabbit was in his basket.