Chapter 3 - Page 2

about to look for a rock, then--on which to break the axe--when he happened to think that there was no longer any sense in trying to do that, because the work was all done!

So he put the axe across his shoulder and went and knocked on Mrs. Rabbit's door.

"Bring on your food!" he said, when Mrs. Rabbit appeared.

"Is the axe all right?" she asked. "It didn't break, did it?"

"No, indeed!" he said--"though I was rather expecting it would."

"Is the wood all split?" she inquired.

"Every stick of it!" answered Peter.

"Then bring it here, near the back door," Mrs. Rabbit told him. "That will help pay for the saw you broke here last week."

"I'll do nothing of the kind!" said Peter Mink. And he was so angry that he went back to the wood-pile and began throwing sticks of wood at Mrs. Rabbit's house, trying to break a window. And before he knew it he had thrown the whole wood-pile in almost the exact spot where Mrs. Rabbit wanted it. And he hadn't broken a single window, either.

But Peter Mink never once realized what he had done. He went off to take a swim in the brook, and maybe catch a trout.

Later when Mrs. Rabbit saw that in spite of what Peter had said, he had moved her wood-pile for her, she wondered why he had not asked for something to eat. But Peter Mink never knocked on her door again. He kept away from Mrs. Rabbit ever afterward, because she was the only person who had ever been able to make him work.