Once more the tears filled her soft, gentle eyes as she stole away, making not the least little sound.  When she was sure she was far enough away to hurry without attracting Peter’s attention, she began to run.

“I saw him talking to my old friend Tommy Tit the Chickadee, and I just know that Tommy will tell me all about him,” she thought, as she scampered along certain private little paths of her own.

Just as she expected, she found Tommy Tit and his anxious little wife, Phoebe, very busy hunting for food for six hungry little babies snugly hidden in a hollow near the top of the old birch-stub.  Tommy was too busy to talk then, so little Miss Fuzzytail sat down under a friendly bramble-bush to rest and wait, and while she waited, she carefully washed her face and brushed her coat until it fairly shone.  You see, not in all the Old Pasture, or the Green Forest, was there so slim and trim and neat and dainty a Rabbit as little Miss Fuzzytail, and she was very, very particular about her appearance.

By and by, Tommy Tit stopped to rest.  He looked down at Miss Fuzzytail and winked a saucy black eye.  Miss Fuzzytail winked back.  Then both laughed, for they were very good friends, indeed.

“Tell me, Tommy Tit, all about Peter Rabbit,” commanded little Miss Fuzzytail.  And Tommy did.

CHAPTER XIV

SOME ONE FOOLS OLD JED THUMPER

You cannot judge a person’s temper by his size.  There is more meanness in the head of a Weasel than in the whole of a Bear. 
                                                 Peter Rabbit.

Old Jed Thumper sat in his bull-briar castle in the middle of the Old Pasture, scowling fiercely and muttering to himself.  He was very angry, was Old Jed Thumper.  He was so angry that presently he stopped muttering and began to chew rapidly on nothing at all but his temper, which is a way angry Rabbits have.

The more he chewed his temper, the angrier he grew.  He was big and stout and strong and gray.  He had lived so long in the Old Pasture that he felt that it belonged to him and that no other Rabbit had any right there unless he said so.  Yet here was a strange Rabbit who had had the impudence to come up from the Green Meadows and refused to be driven away.  Such impudence!

Of course it was Peter Rabbit of whom Old Jed Thumper was thinking.  It was two days since he had caught a glimpse of Peter, but he knew that Peter was still in the Old Pasture, for he had found fresh tracks each day.  That very morning he had visited his favorite feeding ground, only to find Peter’s tracks there.  It had made him so angry that he had lost his appetite, and he had gone straight back to his bull-briar castle to think it over.  At last Old Jed Thumper stopped chewing on his temper.  He scowled more fiercely than ever and stamped the ground impatiently.

“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.