Chapter 10

WHERE LIMBERHEELS GOT HIS LONG TAIL.

Have you ever seen Limberheels the Jumping Mouse when he was in a hurry? If you have, very likely the first time you felt very much as Peter Rabbit did when he saw Limberheels for the first time. He was hopping along across the Green Meadows with nothing much on his mind when from right under his wobbly nose something shot into the air over the tops of the grasses for eight or ten feet and then down and out of sight. Peter rubbed his eyes.

"Did I see it, or didn't I? And if I did, what was it?" gasped Peter.

A squeaky little laugh answered him. "You saw it all right, Peter, but it isn't polite to call any one it. He would be quite provoked if he had heard you. That was my cousin, Limberheels," replied a voice quite as squeaky as the laugh had been.

Peter turned to see the bright eyes of Danny Meadow Mouse twinkling at him from the entrance to a tiny little path that joined the bigger path in which Peter was sitting.

"Hello, Danny!" he exclaimed. "Do you mean to tell me that was a relative of yours? Since when have any of your relatives taken to flying?"

Danny chuckled. "He wasn't flying," he retorted. "He just jumped, that was all." Danny chuckled again, for he knows that Peter considers himself quite a jumper and is inclined to be a bit jealous of any one else who pretends to jump save his cousin, Jumper the Hare.

"Jumped!" snorted Peter. "Jumped! Do you expect me to believe that any Mouse can jump like that? I didn't get a good look at that fellow, but whoever he is I tell you he flew. Nobody can jump like that."

Danny chuckled again. "Wait a minute, Peter," said he. He disappeared, and Peter waited. He waited one minute, two minutes, three minutes, and then suddenly Danny poked his head out from the grass beside the path. "Here he is, Peter," said he, coming wholly out into the path. "Let me introduce my cousin, Limberheels."

As he spoke the grass beside him rustled, and out crept some one beside whom Danny Meadow Mouse looked big, clumsy and homely. One glance was enough to tell Peter that the stranger was a sure-enough member of the Mouse family, but such a member as he never had seen before. He was trim and slender. He wore a reddish-brown coat with a white waistcoat. But the things that made Peter stare very impolitely were his tail and his legs. His tail was nearly twice as long as his body, slim and tapering, and his hind legs were very long, while his fore legs were short. It took only one glance to convince Peter that here was a born jumper. Any one built like that must jump.

"You two must become acquainted and be friends," continued Danny Meadow Mouse. "Peter is one of my best friends, Limberheels. He wouldn't hurt a flea. I'm sure that from now on he will be one of