by Hilary McKay
Arthur looked at George.
“If I let you,” admitted Arthur.
But things were changing for George. Every day there was a new surprise.
A bundle of twigs labeled, Apple Twigs! Bite to bits! and a notice for the garden gate:
PLEASE KEEP CLOSED!
RABBIT IN THE GARDEN!
Another parcel and a very grumbly letter from Thumper.
Dear George,
Today has been a very bad day.
First they cut my nails with their special nail cutter thing.
Then they brushed me and brushed me with their hairbrush thing.
Then they put STUFF BEHIND MY EARS.
Ear cream.
Just where I cannot lick it off.
They say the stuff is to keep away flies.
What flies?
I do not have flies.
Love from your much too clean and tidy friend, Thumper
P. S. Here is some horrible ear cream so that you can see what it’s like.
P. S. again. And here is that tennis ball you used to like to chase.
George was just as cross as Thumper had been when Arthur put the ear cream behind his ears. But Lulu and Mellie, watching through cracks in the fence, were very pleased indeed. And they nudged each other with delight when after the ear cream Arthur produced a shiny wooden hairbrush and brushed George all over, from ears to tail.
“What a lovely brush!” said Lulu, hitching herself onto the fence to talk. “Is it from the pet shop?”
“Oh!” said Arthur, jumping in surprise. “It’s you! No, it’s Mom’s. I borrowed it.”
“Won’t she mind?” asked Mellie, appearing beside Lulu.
“She wasn’t using it.”
“Won’t she notice?”
The answer to that came almost at once. Shocked, indignant shouting. Arthur’s mother calling, “Arthur! Not my new hairbrush! I don’t believe it!”
Lulu and Mellie knew too well how much even the nicest people hate sharing things like hairbrushes with pets. They slipped back into Lulu’s garden and went quietly away. As they went they could hear Arthur protesting from his own side of the fence. “But why do you mind? He’s a perfectly clean rabbit! Look how white his white parts are!”
“Did you hear that?” whispered Lulu to Mellie.
Mellie nodded.
“Perhaps we won’t have to rabbit-nap George after all!”
“No,” agreed Mellie. “Or kidnap Arthur and lock him in the shed.” Mellie sighed. “I suppose that’s good,” she said, but she didn’t sound like she thought it was good. She sounded disappointed. Since she and Arthur had been such a good dance team she had looked forward more than ever to keeping Arthur like a pet in the shed.
“Even just for an afternoon it would have been good,” she said. “It would have been exciting.”
“We’ll do something else exciting,” said Lulu. “I’ve been thinking.”
“What?”
“Arthur’s gotten much better, hasn’t he? He’s a lot nicer to George, and he’s been really friendly lately…”
“We’ve tamed him,” said Mellie. “Almost.”
“Yes,” agreed Lulu. “So do you think he might bring George around to visit Thumper this weekend?”
Mellie thought and then shook her head.
“No. He’s not that tame yet.”
“I don’t want George and Thumper to forget about each other,” said Lulu worriedly.
“Perhaps he might for something special. If he was invited.”
“Like for a party?”
“Perhaps.”
“We’ll have one, then! A birthday party!”
“But it’s nobody’s birthday,” objected Mellie.
“Thumper’s!” said Lulu triumphantly.
“Is it?”
“It might be,” said Lulu. “It must be! Think how long I’ve had him! And he’s never had a birthday while he’s lived with me. I don’t suppose he had one before he came here either. So it must be very nearly his birthday. In fact, it’s probably almost exactly his birthday…”
“Today?” asked Mellie, very surprised.
“Not today,” said Lulu. “Today would be too late to arrange anything. Tomorrow! That’s when Thumper can have his birthday!”
“I didn’t get him a present,” said Mellie, suddenly worried.
“Neither did I, but we will.”
“And a birthday cake?”
“Yes, a carrot cake.”
“And he’s having a party?”
“With all his friends.”
“But there’s only George!”
“I know. So we’d better hurry up and send him an invitation.”
Chapter Six
A Perfect Present
Dear George,
Please come to my birthday party tomorrow because tomorrow is probably my birthday.
It is at three o’clock.
Love from Thumper
P. S. It is not one of those parties where you don’t bring presents.
Lulu and Mellie put in the P.S. because there was an awful new fashion at their school for parties without presents. They would not have put it in if they’d known how much it would alarm Arthur.
Arthur had gotten into the habit of rolling out of bed and heading straight for George’s hutch, and so he found the party invitation almost as soon as it had been delivered. The invitation was written on ordinary paper, but its envelope was made from cabbage leaves sewn together with long grasses.
Arthur read the message while George ate the envelope.
Not one of those parties where you don’t bring presents.
Arthur’s pocket money was spent. His money box was empty.
And even if this was not so, even if his pockets and money box were stuffed full of five-dollar bills, he still wouldn’t know what to buy a rabbit like Thumper.
“Thumper has everything already,” he grumbled to George. “This is going to be awful!” He looked at the invitation and added, “I wish I’d stayed in bed.”
At Lulu’s house the party preparations had already begun. Lulu’s mother said she was very happy to make a carrot cake birthday cake for Thumper if Lulu and Mellie would help by measuring the flour and sugar and cinnamon, and grating the carrots, and breaking the eggs, and then mixing everything together with a little orange juice.
And putting it in the cake pan.
And clearing up the floury sugary eggy splashes they had made.
And reminding her to put it in the oven.
And reminding her to take it out again.
The rest of the party food was much more simple.
“Salad and cookies,” said Lulu, and Mellie agreed that everyone invited, human or animal, would probably eat salad and cookies.
Also there were party bags to be filled with homemade popcorn and party games to be decided.
The games were:
First rabbit up the stairs.
Hide-and-seek in Lulu’s bedroom (where the last rabbit found would be the winner).
Musical Radishes, which Lulu said would be just like musical chairs, except instead of taking away a chair they would take away a radish.
The Big Dig (or race to the bottom of the sandbox).
“And if we have time and everyone wants, the dogs will do their Dog Talent Show!” said Lulu.
“Um,” said Mellie, who had seen the dogs’ talent show many times before. “Oh well. Perhaps Arthur and George will think it’s funny. If they come.”
“If they come?”
“Well, they haven’t said they will. We should have put that thing on the invitation.”
“What thing?”
“Those letters that mean you’ve got to say if you’re coming,” explained Mellie. “Or not!”
Lulu could not bear the thought of not. “But the carrot cake is baking and we’ve made the party bags!” she protested. “They’ve got to come!”
“I suppose we could ask,” said Mellie do
ubtfully. “Say, ‘Are you coming or not?’ But then Arthur would know it was us as well as Thumper.”
“What was us as well as Thumper?”
“You know. The messages and the presents and the party invitation!”
Lulu knew not to ask, “Do you really believe he doesn’t know it’s us?” She knew her crazy, lovely friend Mellie very well. Mellie could believe in lots of things that other people could not: her own rooftop hot air balloon, for instance, and the way she seemed to go slightly invisible when she closed her eyes.
Lulu thought it would be a pity if Mellie stopped believing things. So she said, “We won’t ask. We’ll just have to guess that they’ll come. If they don’t, we’ll…we’ll—”
“We’ll go and get them!” said Mellie. “And you can rabbit-nap George for the party and I’ll really put Arthur in the shed! That’ll teach him what it’s like to be kept in a hutch when you’re supposed to be at a party! Lulu, what about Thumper’s birthday presents?”
Arthur had avoided the present problem by going back to bed with his XBox. When his mom came to see where he was, she found him surrounded by banana peels and cookie wrappers, hacking up Star Wars enemies with his light saber.
He said, “If anyone comes for me, will you tell them I’m sick?”
“Are you sick?” asked his mother, looking crossly at the banana peels and other mess.
“Well, will you tell them I’m busy?” asked Arthur, zapping things very quickly and not looking up at her. “Too busy to do anything.”
“Too busy?” asked his mom.
“Yes,” said Arthur, turning up the volume on his game.
“For goodness’ sake!” exclaimed his mom. “Turn that down!”
“What?”
“Turn it down! In fact, turn the silly thing off and get out of bed! It’s almost lunchtime! And you can tidy up this mess and go outside and clean out that rabbit!”
“I will later.”
Arthur’s mother did the terrible thing she sometimes did. She pulled out the XBox plug.
Then she stepped over a banana peel and marched out of the room looking scary.
Arthur got up very slowly.
He had a very long shower.
He cleared up his bedroom more carefully than he had ever cleared it before.
He plugged in his XBox again, very quietly, with no sound at all, was caught by his mother, and was chased outside.
Outside he felt a little bit better. Lulu and Mellie were not around and George was very pleased to see him.
“Yes, but what about this party?” Arthur asked him, as he dumped him on the ground.
George skipped about in a partyish sort of way.
“We’ve got to bring a present!” Arthur reminded him.
George stopped skipping and looked up at Arthur. A look that said, Well! Where’s the present?
“I don’t have one and I can’t think of one,” said Arthur.
George looked like a rabbit who was trying to think.
“Don’t say carrots because I expect he’s got millions,” said Arthur. “Don’t say cabbages either! Or things to chew! Or carrot mobiles or pass-the-parcels or notices for the gate! Lulu’s thought of all those things already.”
George picked up a stray strand of hay and nibbled it.
“Or hay,” said Arthur. “He’s got plenty of hay.”
Then George did something so amazing, so clever, so just right, that at first Arthur could only stare. And then he ran inside and dragged his mother into the garden, and all in a rush of words he gabbled out the story of Thumper and George, and the messages and the parcels, and the party invitation and finally the terrible birthday-present problem that had sent him back to bed. And he said, “Look at George! Look at George! Look at George!”
But Arthur’s mother was already looking at George.
Then she and Arthur and George as well all became terribly busy.
It was a wonderful party!
George won first rabbit upstairs.
Hide-and-seek in Lulu’s bedroom turned into the Great escape from Lulu’s bedroom and then hide-and-seek all over the house.
Musical Radishes did not work well because all the players took no notice of the music and insisted on eating the radishes instead of running around them.
The Big Dig emptied the sandbox. George won that game too. Lulu looked at Thumper to see if he minded losing twice at his own birthday party. He and George were busy washing each other’s sandy faces. It was easy to see that Thumper did not mind a bit.
Salad and cookies and carrot cake made a perfect birthday lunch.
Everyone helped blow out the candles on the carrot cake, and everyone made a wish.
Lulu forgot about the Dog Talent Show and Mellie did not remind her.
And then it was time for Thumper to open his birthday presents.
Lulu’s mother gave him a Weetabix.
Lulu gave him a large red rose. (Thumper loved red roses. He gobbled them up much faster than all the other colors.)
Mellie’s present was a picture of his friend George, drawn with chalk on the wall of his hutch.
But Arthur and George’s present was huge and beautiful. A flowerpot tied with a yellow ribbon and planted full of dandelions.
“Dandelions!” exclaimed Lulu and Mellie and Lulu’s mother. “What a perfect present!”
Arthur smirked. He knew it was a perfect present. He had known for hours.
“George thought of it!” he told everyone. “He thought of it and he dug up the first dandelion and then he helped me and Mom find lots more. I dug them up and Mom planted them. She tied on that ribbon too. You can take it off if you like. But it was all George’s idea first!”
“George is clever,” said Mellie. “Thumper is too. Think of all the letters he wrote…” She paused and looked at Arthur under her eyelashes, but Arthur only grinned and did not protest. “…But George is very clever! He must have noticed Thumper didn’t have dandelions when he stayed here that week. And he remembered all that time!”
Arthur looked proudly at George, who was sharing Thumper’s rose. Then he went on to tell Lulu and Mellie more interesting things about his rabbit.
How he knew not only his name, but Thumper’s name too, and would gaze in the direction of Thumper’s house whenever he heard it.
How he had begun to dig a burrow.
How, after the dandelions had been planted, they had both gone inside to wash the mud off before the party, and how George had jumped on Arthur’s bed.
“So I thought I’d show him my XBox,” said Arthur. “And he loved it. ’Specially Star Wars. I’m going to start again at the first level so he can follow it properly.”
“Lucky George,” said Mellie enviously.
“You can come too,” offered Arthur.
“All of us? Thumper as well?” asked Lulu.
“If you like,” said Arthur.
Lulu and Mellie looked at each other. And then they looked at Arthur. They looked at him as proudly as he had looked at George.
Arthur did not notice. He was lying on his stomach on Lulu’s bedroom floor. Rabbits were climbing on him. He was eating dandelions.
Lulu wished she could say something to show how pleased she was. How quickly he had changed. How nice he had turned out to be. But she could not think of anything until Arthur spoke himself.
“One day,” said Arthur, “when it’s George’s birthday, could Thumper come for a sleepover? I’d look after him. Would you let him?”
Then Lulu knew what to say.
“’Course I would,” said Lulu.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any r
esemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2012 by Hilary McKay
Illustrations © 2012 by Priscilla Lamont
978-1-4804-7549-6
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