Because right then things did begin to happen. Watch dropped that rat and clamped his teeth right on her sore nose. “There!” he growled in his throat. “I’ll teach you to hurt my little boy!”
“I’ll hurt you!” bawled the Red Cow, trying to stamp in his ribs with her big horny feet.
“You will?” It was the White Cow’s voice—but it wasn’t fluty now. She was galloping, tail up and head down. “Whang!” she hit the Red Cow’s ribs. “Blam!” she hit her so hard in the shoulder that Watch lost his hold. And the Red Cow was all through hurting any one. She turned and ran, limping and licking her sore nose.
Maybe you think Nibble Rabbit wasn’t puzzled when he saw the Red Cow run bawling down the pasture with a limp that would keep her feeding in circles for a week. He had thought of course she was going to fight with Watch the Dog, and instead she had turned on Tommy Peele. Now that was wrong, so Watch had a perfect right to stop her. But, when the White Cow came charging up, Nibble never in the world expected to see her help Watch give the Bed Cow a terrible trouncing.
And here was Watch, all smiles and waggly tail, saying, “Much obliged, I’m sure, Mother Snowflake. I was finding that heifer quite a mouthful.”
And the White Cow was answering, “Oh, I’ve been waiting quite a while to drive a bit of sense into the wild little thing.” And she settled down to switching her tail and chewing her cud as calmly as ever.
But that made Nibble indignant. “She’s not a Wild Thing,” he said. “Wild Things have better manners than any of you or they’d be fighting all the time. I’m a Wild Thing myself, so I know.”
“Oh, it’s the Bunny,” drawled the White Cow, dragging her words the way she drags her toes, because she thinks as slowly as she walks. “Well, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You’re perfectly right. Manners are to keep folks from fighting—to make them think before they pick a quarrel. That Red Cow just wouldn’t think until we made her. Now she’ll learn.”
“’Nother thing,” Nibble insisted, “we don’t help any one against our own kind.”
“That sort of talk is less use than a trampled cornstalk,” Mother Snowflake lowed sensibly. “All the kind we have here is Tommy Peele. His people take care of us, so we take care of him.”