What are they saying?"
"They are saying: we are going to take it
out of old Bliss, and twice over, we are."
"Save us!"
There was no sign of the wet day
the Girabbit spoke of. It was hot,
and they mopped their faces.
"Mr. BLISS!"
No answer.
"I wants my money."
"'E wants 'is money, and 'e means to 'ave it."
No answer.
"Why don't you arrest him?"
"I will!"
"Ha! Ha! I see you," said the Girabbit
at the second, popping his neck
a yard or two out of the chimney.
He heard them, not saw them,
but they did not know that.
They looked up and saw him, and that
was enough. They were astonished!
Indeed most of them fell flat on the spot.
You see Mr. Bliss had so far
kept the Girabbit quite secret,
because he did not want to pay Sergeant
Boffin for a licence for keeping him,
as he was sure it would be double
price - quite 1 5 shillings a year.
The Girabbit was trained to dive down
a hole when strangers came up the hill
and up to now no one else
had seen more than his head
"Get up, get up!"
squeaked the Girabbit.
"Get up, and go away, or I shall come
out of my hole and jump on you!"
Then they got up and went. All except
the bears who are not particularly
frightened. They went behind a hedge.
It was now Mr. Bliss's turn to
laugh: and as he had not laughed
since the day before yesterday,
with nothing but bother in
between, he laughed a lot.
He came out and stood in the
road, and waved to his friends.
"Good morning!"
"Lawks!"
"Anything we can do for you?"
"No thank you! Well - yes, that is
not unless you can help me to get
my Girabbit out of the house?"
"Certainly! Delighted - but not for nothing!"
"Certainly not, I will remember you."
"Certainly, I'll made out a bill."
"We going to start eating you at your
tail and work upwards, if you didn't
come down and out immediate"
"Murder!"
As for the Girabbit it never stopped
jumping till it was quite lost in the distance:
and Mr. Bliss wept big tears at losing it.
After lunch the bears
made out a bill for helping:
and Mr. Bliss went and got
his purse and his money-box,
for he thought the time had come to settle up.
I thought you would like to see
what all these adventures cost him,
by the time everything was paid
for. It was a very expensive time.
That afternoon, as soon as he had said
goodbye to the bears, he took all his money,
got on his bicycle, and
went down to the village.
He paid Mr. Binks and Mr. Day
and Mrs. Knight on the spot
and set postal orders to the
Dorkinses and the Innkeeper.
They said they knew he was
a gentleman all the time.
As a matter of fact Mr. Bliss never
used the motor-car again - he
had taken a great dislike to it.
So he gave it to Mr. Day as a
wedding-present. Yes, wedding-present.
Very soon after this Mr. Day became
Mrs. Knight's third husband.
She said it seemed suitable, seeing how
they were both in the same line of business,
and had a lot of adventures together.
So they set up a green-grocers shop in the
village, and called it "Day and Knight's."
They are very friendly with Mr. Bliss now,
and they always let him have
bananas and cabbages very cheap.
There were great doings at the wedding.
Mr. Bliss played his concertina.
Fattie Dorkins sang a comic song, but as
it was all about policemen with large feet,
Sergeant Boffin did not laugh.
The bears drank everybody's health several
times, and did not go home till next morning.
But best of all, in the middle of it the
Girabbit put his head in through the window!
"Ha! Ha! Here we all are again."
"Where have you been?"
"Ha! Ha! Wouldn't you like to know!
Ask the Dorkinses and the bears!"
That's why the Dorkinses left early.
They did not like the sound of it.
But just then the bears did
not care what happened,
though they changed their
minds when they did get home.
The Girabbit had eaten every bit of food in
their house, and broken the pantry window.
As for the Dorkinses, they found he had
bitten the tops off