XVI
FATTY RACCOON PLAYS ROBBER
After Fatty Raccoon played barber-shop with Jimmy Rabbit and his
brother it was a long time before he met them again.
But one day Fatty
was wandering through the woods when he caught sight of Jimmy. Jimmy
dodged behind a tree.
And Fatty saw Jimmy's brother peep from behind
another.
You see, his ears were so long that they stuck far beyond the
tree,
and Fatty couldn't help seeing them.
"Hello!" Fatty called. "I'm glad to see you."
And he told the
truth, too. He had been trying to find those two brothers for weeks,
because he wanted to get even with them for cutting off his moustache.
Jimmy and his brother hopped out from behind their trees.
"Hello!" said Jimmy. "We were just looking for you." Probably
he meant to say, "We were just looking AT you."
He was somewhat upset
by meeting Fatty; for he knew that Fatty was angry with him.
"Oh, ho! You were, were you?" Fatty answered. He began to
slide down the tree he had been climbing.
Jimmy Rabbit and his brother edged a little further away.
"Better not come too near us!" he said. "We've both got the
pink-eye, and you don't want to catch it."
Fatty paused and looked at the brothers.
Sure enough! their
eyes were as pink as anything.
"Does it hurt much?" Fatty asked.
"Well---it does and it doesn't," Jimmy replied.
"I just stuck a
brier into one of my eyes a few minutes ago and it hurt awful, then.
But you'll be perfectly safe, so long as you don't touch us."
"How long does it last?" Fatty inquired.
"Probably we'll never get over it," Jimmy Rabbit said
cheerfully. And his brother nodded his head, as much as to say,
"That's so!"
Fatty Raccoon was just the least bit alarmed. He really thought
that there was something the matter with their eyes.
You see, though
the Rabbit brothers' eyes were always pink (for they were born that
way), he had never noticed it before.
So Fatty thought it would be
safer not to go too near them.
"Well, it's too bad," he told Jimmy. "I'm sorry. I wanted to
play with you."
"Oh, that's all right!" Jimmy said.
"We can play, just the
same. I'll tell you what we'll play. We'll play---"
"Not barber-shop!" Fatty interrupted. "I won't play
barber-shop, I never liked that game."
Jimmy Rabbit started to smile. But he turned his smile into a
sneeze.
And he said---
"We'll play robber.
You'll like that, I know.
And you can be
the robber. You look like one, anyhow."
That remark made Fatty Raccoon angry.
And he wished that Jimmy
hadn't the pink-eye. He would have liked to make an end of him right
then and there.
"What do you mean?" he shouted. "Robber nothing! I'm just as
good as you are!"
"Of course, of course!" Jimmy said hastily. "It's your face,
you know, That black patch covers your eyes just like a robber's mask.
That's why we want you to be the robber."
Fatty had slipped down his tree to the ground; and now he
looked down into the creek.
It was just as Jimmy said. Fatty had never thought of it before,
but the black patch of short fur across the
upper part of his face made him look exactly like a robber.
"Come on!" said Jimmy. "We can't play the game without you."
"Well---all right!" said Fatty. He began to feel proud of his
mask. "What shall I do?"
"You wait right here," Jimmy ordered. "Hide behind that tree.
We'll go into the woods. And when we come back past this spot you jump
out and say 'Hands up!' ... You understand?"
"Of course!" said Fatty. "But hurry up! Don't be gone long."
"Leave that to us," said Jimmy Rabbit. He winked at his
brother; and they started off together.
Fatty Raccoon did not see that wink.
If he had, he wouldn't have
waited there all the afternoon for those Rabbit brothers to return.
They never came back at all.
And they told everybody about the trick
they had played on Fatty Raccoon.
For a long time after that wherever
Fatty went the forest-people called "Robber!" after him.
And Jasper
Jay was the most annoying of all,because whenever he shouted
"Robber!" he always laughed so loudly and so long.
His hoarse screech
echoed through the woods. And the worst of it was, everybody knew what
he was laughing at.
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