Chapter 3

Jimmy Rabbit was very busy. He was getting ready for May Day. And he intended to hang two May baskets. One of them was already finished, and filled with things that Jimmy himself liked—such as strips of tender bark from Farmer Green's young fruit trees, and bits of turnip from his vegetable cellar. You might almost think that Farmer Green himself ought to have hung that basket. But Jimmy Rabbit never once thought of such a thing. He expected to hang it on the door of a neighbor's house, where there lived a young girl-rabbit. Jimmy had made that basket the best he knew how.

The one he was working on now was a very different sort of basket. But then—you see, he intended to give it to a very different sort of person. He was going to hang this one on Henry Skunk's door.

Frisky Squirrel, who happened to be passing Jimmy's house, stopped and watched him. And he was surprised to learn that Jimmy was going to give a May basket to Henry Skunk.

"What are you going to put in it?" Frisky asked.

"Hens' eggs!" said Jimmy Rabbit.

That surprised Frisky Squirrel still more. If it had been a joke—a trick of some sort—that Jimmy was going to play on Henry Skunk, he could have understood that. But hens' eggs! Why, everyone knew how fond of hens' eggs Henry Skunk was!

"I thought you didn't like Henry Skunk," Frisky said.

"Well, can't I hang a May basket on his door just the same?" asked Jimmy.

Frisky Squirrel said he supposed so—but it was a strange thing to do.

"Look out he doesn't catch you when you're doing it!" he warned Jimmy. Henry Skunk was a quarrelsome fellow. There was no knowing what he wouldn't do if he caught anyone tying anything to his doorknob. "By the way," Frisky added, "where did you get the hens' eggs?"

"Down at Farmer Green's!" Jimmy said.

"I suppose there are lots more," said Frisky.

Jimmy Rabbit smiled.

"Not like these!" he said.

"I suppose you had to be careful not to break them—bringing them so far," Frisky Squirrel remarked.

"Oh, it's easy when you know how," Jimmy Rabbit told him.

"Well, Henry Skunk will break them fast enough, when he finds them," Frisky said.

"Yes, he'll break them!" Jimmy Rabbit laughed. "That's just the point! He'll break them!" You notice that Jimmy didn't say what it was that Henry Skunk would break.