Hazel rambled about in the usual way of a rabbit feeding - five or six slow, rocking hops through the grass; a pause to look round, sitting up with ears erect; then busy nibbling for a short time, followed by another move of a few yards. For the first time for many days he felt relaxed and safe. He began to wonder whether they had much to learn about their new home.
'Fiver was right,' he thought. 'This is the place for us. But we shall need to get used to it and the fewer mistakes we make the better. I wonder what became of the rabbits who made these holes? Did they stop running or did they just move away? If we could only find them they could tell us a lot.'
At this moment he saw a rabbit come rather hesitantly out of the hole farthest from himself. It was Blackberry. He, too, passed hraka, scratched himself and then hopped into the full sunlight and combed his ears. As he began to feed Hazel came up and fell in with him, nibbling among the grass tussocks and wandering on wherever his friend pleased. They came to a patch of milkwort - a blue as deep as that of the sky - with long stems creeping through the grass and each minute flower spreading its two upper petals like wings. Blackberry sniffed at it, but the leaves were tough and unappetizing.
'What is this stuff, do you know?' he asked.
'No, I don't,' said Hazel, 'I've never seen it before.'
'There's a lot we don't know,' said Blackberry. 'About this place, I mean. The plants are new, the smells are new. We're going to need some new ideas ourselves.'
'Well, you're the fellow for ideas,' said Hazel. 'I never know anything until you tell me.'
'But you go in front and take the risks first,' answered Blackberry. 'We've all seen that. And now our journey's over, isn't it? This place is as safe as Fiver said it would be. Nothing can get near us without our knowing: that is, as long as we can smell and see and hear.'
'We can all do that.'
'Not when we're asleep: and we can't see in the dark.'
'It's bound to be dark at night,' said Hazel, 'and rabbits have got to sleep.'
'In the open?'
'Well, we can go on using these holes if we want to, but I expect a good many will lie out. After all, you can't expect a bunch of bucks to dig. They might make a scrape or two - like that day after we came over the heather - but they won't do more than that.'
'That's what I've been thinking about,' said Blackberry. 'Those rabbits we left - Cowslip and the rest - a lot of the things they did weren't natural to rabbits - pushing stones into the earth and carrying food underground and Frith knows what.'
'The Threarah's lettuce was carried underground, if it comes to that.'
'Exactly. Don't you see, they'd altered what rabbits do naturally because they thought they could do better? And if they altered their ways, so can we if we like. You say buck rabbits don't dig. Nor they do. But they could, if they wanted to. Suppose we had deep, comfortable burrows to sleep in? To be out of bad weather a