Yet can't believe it so,
Pray tell me what you can believe.
I'd really like to know.
THINGS are that way sometimes. They are so surprising that it doesn't seem that they can be true. Just ask Peter Rabbit, or little Mrs. Peter. Either one will tell you that they have had hard work to believe what their eyes saw. You see, it was this way: Peter knew that somewhere near the dear Old Briar-patch was the home of Bob White. Anyway Bob had said that it was near there, and he himself was never very far away. So Peter didn't doubt that Bob had told him the truth. No one would stay around one place day after day in the beautiful springtime, when everybody was busy housekeeping, unless his home was very near.
But Peter had looked and looked for that home of Bob White's without ever getting so much as a glimpse1 of it. He had watched Bob White and had visited every place that he saw Bob go to, but Bob had managed to keep his secret and Peter was no wiser than before, though he was thinner from running about so much. Little Mrs. Peter had tried her best to make him see that it was no business of his. You see, she knew just how Mrs. Bob felt about wanting her home a secret, for little Mrs. Peter had had many anxious hours when her own babies were very small.
Finally Peter did give up, but it was because he had looked in every place he could think of and at last had made up his mind that if Bob White really had a nest in the Green Meadows2 it certainly wasn't near the dear Old Briar-patch. Then one morning a surprising thing happened. Peter was just getting ready to run over to the Laughing Brook3 when some one right in front of him there in the Old Briar-patch exclaimed4.
“Be careful where you step, Peter Rabbit!”
Peter stopped short and looked to see who had spoken. There, under a
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