"And we have to be up so early to-morrow morning," said mother, "my dear little boy, you really _should_ have been fast asleep by this time."
"And he wakes me _so_ early in the morning," said Denny, who was standing before the fire giving herself little cross shakes every time poor Lisa, who was combing out her long fair hair, came to a tuggy bit. "_Lisa_, you're _hurting_ me; _Lisa_, do take care," she added snappishly.
"My dear Denny, how very impatient you are!" said her mother. "I don't know how you will bear all the little discomforts of a long journey if you can't bear to have your hair combed."
On this, Denny, as Fritz would have said, "shut up." She could not bear it to be thought that she was babyish or "silly." Her great, great wish was to be considered quite a big girl. You could get her to do anything by telling her it would be babyish not to do it, or that doing it would be like big people, which, of course, showed that she _was_ rather babyish in reality, as sensible children understand that they cannot be like big people in everything, and that they wouldn't be at all nice if they were.
Baby always felt sorry for Denny or any of them when mother found fault with them. He jumped up from the floor--at least he _got_ up, his legs were too short for him to spring either up or down very actively--and trotted across to his sister.
"Poor Denny," he said, reaching up to kiss her, "him won't wake her up so early to-mollow morning."
"But we'll _have_ to wake early to-morrow," said Denny, rather crossly still, "it's no use you beginning good ways about not waking me now, just when everything's changed."
"Is your box quite ready now, dear?" said his mother. "Well then, let Lisa get you ready for bed as quick as she can, and you and Denny must go to sleep without any talking, and wake fresh in the morning."
But Baby still looked sad; his face began working and twisting, and at last he ran to mother and hid it in her lap, bursting into tears.
"Denny makes him so unhappy," he said. "Him doesn't like everysing to be changed like Denny says. Him is so sorry to go away and to leave him's house and Thomas and Jones, and oh! him is _so_ sorry to leave the labbits!"
"And him's a tired little boy. I think it's because he's so tired that he's so sad about going away," said mother. "Think, dear, how nice it is that we're all going _together_, not Celia or Fritz or anybody left behind. For you know Thomas has his old mother he wouldn't like to leave, and Jones has his wife and children. And if the rabbits could talk, I'm quite sure they would tell you that they'd far rather stay here in their own nice little house, with plenty of cabbages, than be bundled into a box and taken away in the railway ever so far, without being able to run about for ever so many days."