Mrs. Bunny was soaking her tired-out-from-high-heeled feet and reading choice bits of the paper when she stumbled on this.
“Well,” she said to herself. “Isn’t that nice?”
Meanwhile, it was the second night King Lear was playing on the stage at Stratford. Mr. Bunny stood in the wings and peeked out at the audience. He had said many times that Mrs. Bunny had eyes that were always counting the house. If she had been here that was exactly what she would have been doing. But she wouldn’t need to tonight. One look would tell her every seat was filled. And he was largely responsible. He had clipped the reviews from opening night and pocketed them to show Mrs. Bunny when he got home. “The most powerful Lear this company has seen yet!” read one. “This is a rabbit born to play Lear,” read another. Yes. Wasn’t that what he had always told Mrs. Bunny? Perhaps he would stay on to play the West End of London. Maybe he would take it on the road. A touring thespian bunny, he!
The play began. The other actors were swell players and terrific guys. They helped Mr. Bunny find his way onstage and off, pushing him hither and yon to hit his marks. They always insisted he come on last for the curtain call, and every man of them stepped back a bit so that he would be in the forefront for the bows. They had helped him learn his lines and practice them. They couldn’t have been kinder. But nevertheless, as he stood onstage awaiting his next speech, his mind wandered back to Mrs. Bunny. He remembered the look on her face, her ears in a twist, as they waltzed shipboard. But what of his rising star? The romance of greasepaint and the open road? As he asked himself these questions, his happy dreams took an unexpected turn. Instead of the great adventure of the vagabond dramaturgic life, he saw himself returning each night to a lonely hotel room, eating store-bought carrot cake, darning his own socks, reading articles from The Scientific Bunny to no one, with no cheerful inane comments from Mrs. Bunny. He began to droop when suddenly he was awoken by a savage pinch.
“It’s YOUR line,” someone hissed at him.
“AND YET I HAVE A WIFE!” he thundered.
He did this so well that there was a sudden smattering of spontaneous applause.
“Daughter,” hissed his fellow actor, “the line is ‘And yet I have a daughter!’ ”
“That may be Lear’s line but it is not mine,” he whispered back. Then he bowed to the many whose clapping had become furious. Bunny clapping is not very loud. The fur muffles it. To compensate, it often goes on for quite a while. Mr. Bunny bowed again.
Then he hopped right off the stage.
The next day was to be a busy one. There was candy to train! Mrs. Bunny arose early and made her rabbity toilet before heading down the lonely echoey front stairs to have her coffee and toast. She almost shrieked her little bunny head off when she arrived in the kitchen and there sat a figure, his feet up on the table, reading the paper and crunching on some toast with carrot jam.
“I see there is talk about the queen of England being a rabbit. Did you have anything to do with this?” asked a certain lagomorphic pal.
“Mr. Bunny!” shrieked Mrs. Bunny, falling upon him with many furry hugs.
“Yes?” replied Mr. Bunny. “For so I am called.”
“You have returned. How was life on the stage?”
“Oh, it had its moments, it had its moments,” said Mr. Bunny, calmly crunching toast. “And look, the guys gave me this swell souvenir.”
Mr. Bunny held out his brand-new manly carryall.
“They handed it to me as I hopped offstage midspeech.”
“Midspeech? Weren’t they angry to have you quit right in the middle of the play?”
“Oh no. Well, half of them were. The half that had bet fivers that I would leave you for a life on the stage. The half that had bet I’d be gone before the week was out were pretty happy. There was a slight delay in the play while the fivers changed hands and the understudy was brought on. But it’s all part of the artistic life, my dear, all part of the artistic life. Here, look at my reviews. They call me masculine and full of dash.”
“Well, of course you’re masculine. And full of something.”
“Dash.”
“Whatever.”
“Anyhow, I did give that speech a stirring reading. ‘AND YET I HAVE A DAUGHTER!’ ” thundered Mr. Bunny in his best stentorian voice, hopping up to stand on the chair for effect.
“Oh, Mr. Bunny,” said Mrs. Bunny admiringly, but not really paying attention because she was busy exploring all the pockets of the manly carryall.
“Yes, I was quite the theatrical hit, Mrs. Bunny.”
“You may as well give me the bag,” said Mrs. Bunny thoughtfully. “I don’t believe you look so dashing carrying a purse as you might think.”
“It’s not a purse,” said Mr. Bunny.
“It is now,” said Mrs. Bunny, transferring all the contents of her old purse into her new one. “It’s enough for you that you had your turn on the stage. And I know you; you would soon tire of this thing and lose it. Now, I am going to have a quick breakfast, and then we must hop to the sweet shoppe. It is a good thing you returned when you did. We have much to do.” And she filled him in on the new plan to teach candy to do magical things. “Training, consistent training. Just like with dogs.”
The Bunnys hopped all the way into Bellyflop holding paws. They had missed each other something terrible.
At the sweet shoppe all was hustle and bustle. Madeline had told everyone about Mrs. Bunny’s magical-candy idea. Of course, to Flo and Mildred she had claimed the idea as her own. They all thought it was brilliant, so Flo painted a new sign for the shoppe. It said:
MAGICAL CANDY
JUST LIKE IN OLDWHATSHERNAME’S BOOKS!
Katherine had made a list of all the tricks they could teach the candy. The bubble gum was to blow to the size of a hot-air balloon, and the blower would be able to hang from it by her teeth and float away. The string licorice was to grow to great lengths, to be tossed around tree branches so you could swing from them. The jawbreakers would turn you different colors as you sucked through the layers. First red, then blue, then yellow. Who wouldn’t want to be an exciting shade of puce now and then?
There were two dozen types of candy set out on the shelves, all needing to be trained. It was quite exhausting. By the end of the day all they had achieved were bubble gum bubbles that blew up to the size of regular balloons. But Madeline said she wasn’t sure anyone would call this magical. Also the bubbles refused to float up into space and it was quite a mess when they popped.
“Don’t worry,” said Mrs. Bunny. “When have you ever had a puppy you could train in a day? It takes time and patience.”
“We may have patience but we don’t have time,” said Madeline. “We’re already into August and we have made no money at all. We have lost money. Flo says he has gotten a gig on a cruise ship leaving in ten days. We have ten days to make thirty thousand dollars, Mrs. Bunny. We must open the shoppe tomorrow and hope for the best.”
Mr. Bunny was just about to say someone might have consulted him before starting such a ridiculous project, when Madeline added, “Oh, Mr. Bunny, you must put your big brain to work! It’s our only chance!”
It melted his little bunny heart. “Yes, ahem, you can always count on that,” he replied. “Come, Mrs. Bunny. Let us hop-pace back and forth; you know how that always jogs my brain into action.”
Mr. and Mrs. Bunny hopped back and forth in front of the store. Occasionally Mrs. Bunny, who wasn’t blessed with Mr. Bunny’s focus, broke into a cha-cha.
“Concentrate, Mrs. Bunny!” barked Mr. Bunny. “I am always on the verge of a big idea when you distract me with your dancing fur.”
But unfortunately, in the end Mr. Bunny’s long hopping journey the night before had rendered him unfit for more than fifteen minutes of hop-pacing. His paw pads were bruised and weary.
“We must make our adieus,” he said to Madeline and Katherine. “But fear not, I will set my big bunny brains to boil and they will churn through the night with
so many ideas that you will not be able to keep up.”
And then he and Mrs. Bunny hopped back to the castle and bed. He was snoring before his head hit the pillow.
In the morning the Bunnys found Katherine and Madeline looking cross and tired. They had stayed up most of the night trying to train the candy.
“But we did it. Mostly,” said Madeline, yawning. “Look.”
She shook out a piece of licorice. It did look as if it might be a tiny bit bigger.
“Okay, it’s not great, but it is magical,” said Madeline, looking hopeful.
“It took all night just to get it to do that,” said Katherine. “This is impossible. We’ll never have it ready in time. People will call us charlatans. The shoppe will go bankrupt. Mildred will never have the money to buy the vegetable garden and Madeline will never have the money to go to college. She’ll be living in a grass hut and making silver jewelry until the day she dies.”
“Why a grass hut?” asked Mr. Bunny. Nothing got past his big bunny brain.
“Now listen,” interrupted Mrs. Bunny. “You must never think that way. After all, everything has worked out so far. I think you’ve done a lovely training job and I’m sure you’ve planted the idea in the candy’s head. It’s just like training a puppy. You say, ‘Sit, sit, sit, sit’ until you’re blue in the face and you think they will never understand and then one day they do it just like that and you realize it just needed time to sink in. I’m sure the candy will think about its trick on the way home in the brown bag, and once it reaches its destination it will all be clear in its head and it will snap to and start performing. After all, what else does it have to do with its time?”
“Mrs. Bunny, you’re sounding daft,” Mr. Bunny whispered in her ear.
“Hush!” Mrs. Bunny whispered back. “Look at Madeline’s face. She must have hope.” Then she turned back to the girls. “Just think, you saved the day even without Mr. Bunny’s big brain. Good for you!”
While Mrs. Bunny continued to make her usual encouraging noises, Mr. Bunny quietly took one of each kind of candy behind the shoppe to see what the girls had achieved. It was frighteningly little. Mr. Bunny saw lawsuits and debt and ruin ahead. But never fear, he said to himself, now that his enormous bunny brain had had its full quota of refreshing sleep, it was grinding out ideas at its usual stunning rate. There were six or seven stacked up in the hopper already. He chose number four.
“Mrs. Bunny,” he said, pulling her aside after he’d hopped back into the shoppe. “This whole venture is going to go bust without our help.”
“I feared as much,” whispered Mrs. Bunny. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. What are we to do?” She said this while wringing her fur. When she discovered that this pinched, she grabbed hold of Mr. Bunny’s and wrung his instead.
“Stop that!” he said, slapping her paw.
“Ow, stop that yourself!” she said, slapping him back.
“Get ahold of yourself. As usual, I have a plethora of ideas. I have selected idea number four to begin with. We are going to write out the training techniques for each kind of candy on a sticky label, and as the customers leave the shoppe, you and I will surreptitiously stick the labels on the bags. You know how no one ever notices us. We can pretend to be statues standing right inside the door. No one will suspect we are alive.”
“Why would there be statues right inside the door?” asked Mrs. Bunny skeptically. “I see many flaws in this plan, Mr. Bunny.”
“Shut up. There just would. We are no longer selling trained candy—we are selling people the fun of training their own! Of course, once people start crowding to get in the shoppe, we will have to be careful no one steps on us or mistakes us for earmuffs.”
“Nobody could ever mistake you for an earmuff,” said Mrs. Bunny placidly. “You are far too noisy and opinionated.”
There was always a honeymoon period after the Bunnys had been separated but it never lasted long. Mr. Bunny could see this one was already over.
“Humph,” he said, and they hopped back to the castle to use the duchess’s computer and printer to make millions of sticky labels spelling out the training technique for each kind of candy.
It was a very busy week but quite an exciting one. A shoppe with magical candy. Who could resist? First the news of the magical-candy shoppe spread by word of mouth. Even parents who did not normally allow their children candy came to sneak a peek. And once inside, how could they resist buying?
“Look, Bertha,” said a man with six drooling children in tow. “Jelly beans that turn into tropical fish when you drop them in the bath! Bubble gum that blows bubbles the size of hot-air balloons. We’ll have one of each kind of candy you’ve got,” he said to Mildred, who was busy serving six other people as well.
“But, Fred,” said Bertha, “we never give the children candy. You say you can’t afford the dental bills.”
“Look, they’ve got dollies that turn into REAL dollies! For fifty pence each. That’s very good value, Bertha. You can’t buy the girls dollies for fifty pence. We could buy dozens and open a dolly shoppe. Give me all your dollies!” he barked at Mildred, who was looking exhausted and confused by the crowds waiting outside and shouting for others to hurry and finish their business so they could have a turn.
“Hey, that’s not in the spirit of the shoppe,” said an irate woman. “You can’t take all the dollies!”
“Just watch me!” said Fred.
“Oh, let him,” said the irate woman’s husband. “I want all the jellies that become tropical fish. I’m going to start an aquarium.”
“Don’t worry, there’s more in the back, always more in the back!” said Flo happily. He was astounded to find that one of his business ventures was finally successful. “And it’s all thanks to Oldwhatshername!”
“How’s that again?” asked a man who was a reporter for a local paper and happened to be in the shoppe buying some exploding gumdrops. He got out his notebook and pen and started scribbling.
Soon every newspaper in the country carried the story, which brought in yet more customers. And with them, more reporters.
Finally, a tabloid printed a story that Oldwhatshername had gotten word that her name was on a shoppe sign and was suing! Oldwhatshername had retired to her castle with eau de cologne on her forehead from the shock of being so used!
“ ‘I Invented Magical Candy!’ Says Oldwhatshername,” read the headline. At first Flo and Mildred were concerned.
“We cannot afford to be sued,” said Mildred.
But before Flo and Mildred had a chance to worry in earnest, it was revealed that the tabloid had made the story up. Oldwhatshername neither knew nor cared about the shoppe. When asked about it in an interview she said, “Sue? Nonsense, I wish them luck.”
Whether for good or bad, the tabloid story brought in yet more people.
Mr. and Mrs. Bunny were kept very busy sticking on labels and trying not to be noticed. They had to quickly develop the technique of selecting the proper labels for each person’s candy bag and hopping up and sticking them on as the customers left the shoppe. Although the candy wasn’t magical, the labels themselves began to create new interest in the shoppe.
“There was nothing on the bag when they handed it to me!” customers told their friends. “But when I got home, these training directions appeared. Like magic! I can’t get the candy to do tricks, but the shoppe is magic, all right. How else could the labels with the magical directions suddenly appear?”
“It’s not magic, it’s a miracle!”
“It’s not a miracle, it’s magic.”
The newspapers started up again. “Magical Happenings in Bellyflop.” “The Mystical Appearance of Labels on Bags!” Flo was interviewed and mystified everyone by repeating over and over, “It’s just like what happened with the Pop-Tarts. It’s the mystical appearance of sugar in all our lives!”
“The things people will believe,” said Mr. Bunny in disgust. “Magical mystical, indeed. A lot of hard work by bunnies is mo
re like it.”
“People need magic,” said Mrs. Bunny. “They need to believe in such things.”
“Pshaw!” said Mr. Bunny.
As yet more and more people came in and out of the shoppe, Mr. and Mrs. Bunny had a hard time keeping up with sticking the labels on the bags. Oftentimes they missed someone until the person had left, and had to hop down the street after him on their long and floppy tired shoppe feet.
So it was one day just as the shoppe was closing. The last two customers managed to slide out with unlabeled bags.
“I’m going to have a heart attack if this keeps up,” said Mr. Bunny as he and Mrs. Bunny went hopping wildly after them. Unfortunately, the couple got on a motorbike and sped off. Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, without a thought, followed swiftly behind.
They could see the couple getting off their motorbike on a distant hill and strolling through the meadows. “Come on,” said Mrs. Bunny wearily. “They’re on foot again. We can catch up.”
The Bunnys finally came upon the couple under a tree, their bag unattended, so it was the work of a moment to label it. They were trying to roll down the hill to give their paws a rest when Mrs. Bunny found herself suddenly next to a largish hole with a fox speeding toward it.
“Shoot it! Shoot it! Before it makes its way through its foxy tunnel!” cried a voice, and looking up, Mrs. Bunny saw a large band of hedgehogs on horseback racing toward her. The speaker threw a gun to Mrs. Bunny, who caught it deftly.
“Shoot the fox?” said Mrs. Bunny in confusion. “I thought you were on a hunt for hedges?”
“Don’t be stupid,” cried the Duchess of Bungleyhog. “Hurry. Shoot it before it gets away. Shoot it and we’ll make you queen!”
Mrs. Bunny looked down the hole. The fox had caught his tail on a root. He peered up at her and the gun. His face turned pale as he saw his fate approaching.
“Hurry up! He’ll get away. We’ve been hunting him for days. This is your chance. You’ll be queen in a trice! You can skip all the social-climbing preliminaries. Now SHOOT!” yelled the duchess.
Lord and Lady Bunny—Almost Royalty! Page 15
