"you must have your old bunny!" she said. "fancy all that fuss for a toy!"
the boy sat up in bed and stretched out his hands.
"give me my bunny!" he said. "you mustn't say that. he isn't a toy. he's real!"
when the little rabbit heard that he was happy, for he knew that what the skin horse had said was true at last. the nursery magic had happened to him, and he was a toy no longer. he was real. the boy himself had said it.
that night he was almost too happy to sleep, and so much love stirred in his little sawdust heart that it almost burst. and into his boot-button eyes, that had long ago lost their polish, there came a look of wisdom and beauty, so that even nana noticed it next morning when she picked him up, and said, "i declare if that old bunny hasn't got quite a knowing expression!"
that was a wonderful summer!
near the house where they lived there was a wood, and in the long june evenings the boy liked to go there after tea to play. he took the velveteen rabbit with him, and before he wandered off to pick flowers, or play at brigands among the trees, he always made the rabbit a little nest somewhere among the bracken, where he would be quite cosy, for he was a kind-hearted little boy and he liked bunny to be comfortable. one evening, while the rabbit was lying there alone, watching the ants that ran to and fro between his velvet paws in the grass, he saw two strange beings creep out of the tall bracken near him.
they were rabbits like himself, but quite furry and brand-new. they must have been very well made, for their seams didn't show at all, and they changed shape in a queer way when they moved; one minute they were long and thin and the next minute fat and bunchy, instead of always staying the same like he did. their feet padded softly on the ground, and they crept quite close to him, twitching their noses, while the rabbit stared hard to see which side the clockwork stuck out, for he knew that people who jump generally have something to wind them up. but he couldn't see it. they were evidently a new kind of rabbit altogether.
