70 FLUFF-BUTTON THE RABBIT 
Fluff- Button, and used to run and sniff at his little 
brown ears in the grass, I cannot say positively 
whether they ever talked to one another or no. 
I often lay in the bushes and watched them feed 
side by side ; but the language of the Woods is 
not that of men. It is a more subtle, and yet a more 
simple language, communicated by movements of 
the eyes, ears, and whiskers, and no man has ever 
thoroughly learned it yet. 
The night after the first bluebell had opened, 
Fluff-Button went all alone to the Sheep Field at 
moonrise for the first time. He was now three- 
parts grown, and instead of feeding by the hedgerow 
with one eye on covert, he crept further and further 
out towards the middle of the pasture like any old 
buck rabbit. 
It was a chilly night ; but the air on the hill was 
less cold than that in the valley, where a damp mist 
lay. A sheep-dog yelped monotonously at the end 
of his chain from a farmhouse beyond the wood ; 
and at the bottom of the field short grunts and 
incessant bleating told that the sheep were feeding. 
The Sheep Field was always noisy at night. One or 
another of the ewes would lose sight of her lamb 
behind a bush, and then for a long while either cried 
to the other, and yet neither would stir ; and the 
wind everlastingly sang in the trees in Knockdane. 
