The Little Rabbit and the Hidden Hole

Rabbit spread her blue picnic blanket across the grass. She had stitched a yellow sun into every corner.

“Room for three friends,” she said, patting three places. “And a very important cake.”

Mouse packed her little mending pouch beside the cake tin. Hedgehog brought three cups and a flask of apple juice.

Their picnic place was under the old apple tree. The wide path curved round a bramble bush. A narrow gap went straight through it.

“I'll get there first and make everything lovely!” called Rabbit.

She gathered up her blanket and squeezed through the gap.

One blue corner caught on a thorn.

Rabbit pulled.

RRRIP!

A hole, as wide as her paw, opened beside a yellow sun. Rabbit stared at the loose threads.

She had worked so hard on that blanket.

Mouse and Hedgehog were coming round the bend. Rabbit quickly folded the torn corner underneath.

There. Nobody could see.

Under the apple tree, Rabbit laid out the folded blanket. Mouse set down the cake. Hedgehog placed the cups in a careful row.

Rabbit sat on one side. Mouse sat on the other.

Hedgehog tried to squeeze between them.

“My bottom seems to be in the grass,” he said.

“Perhaps we could open this corner?” Mouse suggested.

“Oh! That's a special fold,” said Rabbit.

She shuffled the cake tin towards the middle. Hedgehog shuffled closer. Mouse shuffled sideways.

Now Mouse's bottom was in the grass.

Nobody had taken a bite of cake.

Mouse reached for her cup. The folded corner slipped, and a tuft of grass poked through the hole.

Rabbit covered it with the cake tin.

“Is the blanket growing?” asked Hedgehog.

Rabbit gave a tiny laugh. It did not feel very funny inside.

Mouse looked at the blanket. Then she looked at Rabbit.

“We don't seem to have room for everyone,” she said quietly.

Rabbit's ears drooped. She had wanted a lovely picnic. Instead, her friends were perched on its edges, waiting while she guarded a secret.

She could leave the tin where it was.

Or she could move it.

Rabbit took a breath and lifted the cake tin.

“I tore the blanket on a bramble,” she said. “I pulled when it caught. Then I hid the hole. I'm sorry I kept making you move.”

She unfolded the corner. The torn edges lay between them.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

“Does that mean we can't have our picnic?” Rabbit whispered.

Mouse opened her mending pouch. Inside were wool, a blunt needle and little pieces of cloth.

“It means we've got something to mend,” she said.

Rabbit chose a round yellow patch, big enough to cover the hole. Hedgehog held the blanket flat. Mouse showed Rabbit how to turn the loose edges in.

Then Rabbit stitched the patch down, one careful stitch at a time.

Her first stitch was long. Her next was short.

“Shall I pull them out?” she asked.

Mouse gave the patch a gentle tug. It stayed firmly in place.

“They're holding,” she said.

Rabbit finished the last stitch. The patch was a little crooked, and the blanket no longer looked exactly as it had that morning.

She spread it right out.

Room for Rabbit. Room for Mouse. Room for Hedgehog.

And, at last, room for cake.

A crumb tumbled onto the new patch. Rabbit picked it up, then laughed.

“That sun's got a freckle.”

When it was time to go home, Rabbit held up one end of the blanket.

“Will you help me carry it round the wide path?” she asked.

Her friends took the other corners.

Between them, the crooked yellow sun bobbed all the way home.