 Fatty
Coon Plays Robber
Written
by: Arthur Scott Bailey, 1915
Recorded by: Patricia Thornton-Houser
Click the icon above to listen online or to download
for your MP3 player.
Click on green words to read a simple definition in English. All
other words are from the first 1000 words on the Nation frequency
word list. If you would like to take a test on the first 1000 English
words, go here.
After
Fatty Coon played barbershop
with Jimmy Rabbit and his brother it was a long time before he met
them again. But one day Fatty was wandering
through the woods when he caught sight of Jimmy. Jimmy dodged
behind a tree. And Fatty saw Jimmy's brother peep
from behind another. You see, his ears were so long that they stuck
out far beyond the tree, and Fatty couldn't help seeing them.
"Hello!"
Fatty called. "I'm glad to see you." And he told the truth,
too. He had been trying to find those two brothers for weeks, because
he wanted to get
even with them for cutting off his moustache.
Jimmy and his brother hopped
out from behind their trees.
"Hello!"
said Jimmy. "We were just looking for you." Probably he
meant to say, "We were just looking AT you." He was somewhat
upset
by meeting Fatty; for he knew that Fatty was angry
with him.
"Oh,
ho! You were, were you?" Fatty answered. He began to slide
down the tree he had been climbing.
Jimmy
Rabbit and his brother edged
a little further away.
"Better
not come too near us!" he said. "We've both got the pinkeye,
and you don't want to catch it."
Fatty
paused
and looked at the brothers. Sure enough! their eyes were as pink
as anything.
"Does
it hurt
much?" Fatty asked.
"Well--it
does and it doesn't," Jimmy replied.
"I just stuck
a briar
into one of my eyes a few minutes ago and it hurt
awful,
then. But you'll be perfectly safe,
so long as you don't touch
us."
"How
long does it
last?" Fatty inquired.
"Probably
we'll never get
over it," Jimmy Rabbit said cheerfully.
And his brother nodded
his head, as much as to say, "That's so!"
Fatty
Coon was just a little bit alarmed.
He really thought that there was something the
matter with their eyes. You see, though the Rabbit brothers'
eyes were always pink (for they were born
that way), he had never
noticed it before. So Fatty thought it would be safer not to
go too near them.
"Well,
it's too bad," he told Jimmy. "I'm sorry. I wanted to
play with you."
"Oh,
that's all right!" Jimmy said. "We can play, just the
same. I'll tell you what we'll play. We'll play--"
"Not
barbershop!" Fatty interrupted.
"I won't play barbershop, I never liked that game."
Jimmy
Rabbit started to smile. But he turned his smile into a sneeze.
And he said-- "We'll play robber.
You'll like that, I know. And you can be the robber. You look like
one, anyway."
That
remark
made Fatty Coon angry. And he wished that Jimmy didn't have the
pinkeye. He would have liked to make an end of him right then and
there.
"What
do you mean?"
he shouted.
"Robber nothing! I'm just as good as you are!"
"Of
course, of course!" Jimmy said
hastily. "It's your face, you know, that black patch
covers
your eyes just like a robber's mask.
That's why we want you to be the robber."
Fatty
had slipped
down his tree to the ground;
and now he looked down into the creek.
It was just as Jimmy said. Fatty had never thought of it before,
but the black patch of short fur
across the upper part of his face made him look exactly like a robber.
"Come
on!" said Jimmy. "We can't play the game without you."
"Well--all
right!" said Fatty. He began to feel proud
of his mask. "What shall I do?"
"You
wait right here," Jimmy ordered.
"Hide
behind that tree. We'll go into the woods.
And when we come back past this spot
you jump out and say 'Hands up!' ... You understand?"
"Of
course!" said Fatty. "But hurry
up! Don't be gone long."
"Leave
that to us," said Jimmy Rabbit. He winked
at his brother; and they started off together.
Fatty
Coon did not see that wink. If he had, he wouldn't have waited there
all the afternoon for those Rabbit brothers to return. They never
came back at all. And they told everybody about the trick
they had played on Fatty Coon. For a long time after that wherever
Fatty went the forest-people called "Robber!" after him.
And Jasper Jay
was the most annoying
of all, because whenever he shouted "Robber!" he always
laughed
so loudly and so long. His hoarse
screech
echoed
through the woods. And the worst
of it was, everybody knew what he was laughing at.
|
