You just ought to have heard the in the ’s when Bob White came whirring home with his wild tale. But do you think he could make the quail believe that Stripes had helped Rabbit set him free again? Not until Nibble Rabbit himself came along and told them exactly the same thing—only he gave Stripes all the credit.  
“Eggs! Eggs!” exclaimed Bob White’s wife when Stripes explained he was trying to pay back because he’d mussed up her nest that morning. “What are a couple of eggs? I’ll scrape them back into the nest and lay a couple more in no time. I hadn’t begun to set on them.”
 
“Come along, Stripes,” said Nibble. “We must tell Doctor . You know he told Watch the Dog to try you. If the quail can trust you, I guess I can. Your cousin Slyfoot the would have eaten me long ago if I’d come this close to him. Why didn’t you?”
 
“I was afraid,” Stripes owned up. “The little warned me that if I did the dog would come after me. Anyway, I couldn’t catch you. Neither could Slyfoot if you only knew it.
 
“You know,” he went on to explain, “we things from under the earth are all scary—just as scary as you are. Only you’re so afraid of us that you never remember we have any one to be afraid of. When Slyfoot chases one of you silly bunnies you run round and round through the brush trying to hide yourself from him. But as long as you hide he’s hidden, too. All the time he’s trailing you. So he can take his time about finding you—and he always does. Now if you’d run straight out in the open, where the grass is short and there isn’t any place to hide, he wouldn’t dare to follow. He knows the would get him.”
 
“If he didn’t get us first,” was Nibble’s sly comment.
 
“But you’ve got twice as many chances to get away. You can and run,” Stripes insisted. “Besides, your feet are so quiet; ours make much more noise when we’re . And the big owl hears you before he looks for you.”
 
“He does?” Nibble exclaimed. “How do you know?”
 
“Why every one in the woods knows that an owl is either right-eared or left-eared. And whichever ear he uses most, that side of his head gets lop-sided from listening,” Stripes said.
 
“But his feathers are so I don’t see how any one would find out, if it’s really so,” Nibble objected.
 
“Killer (he meant the big weasel) ate one,” grinned Stripes. “I guess he ought to know. You see everything has something to b............