The Velveteen Rabbit Audiobook
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North American (General)Transcript
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there once was a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunch hee as a rabbit should be. His coat was spotted brown and white. He had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen on Christmas morning when he sat wedged in the top of the boy's stocking with a sprig of holly between his paws. The effect was charming. There were other things in the stocking. Nuts and oranges and a toy engine and chocolate, almonds and a clockwork mouse. But the rabbit was quite the best of all. For at least two hours, the boy loved him, and then aunts and uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels. And in the excitement of looking at all the new presence the velveteen Rabbit was for gotten for a long time, he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy and being only made a velveteen. Some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior and looked down upon everyone else. They were full of modern ideas and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his ringing. In technical terms, the rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that Rio rabbits existed. He thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out of date and should never be mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the jointed wooden lion who is made by the disabled soldiers and should have had broader views, put on airs and pretended he was connected with government. Between them all the poor little rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace on the only person who is kind to him at all was the skin horse. The skin horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces he was wise for. He had seen a long succession of mechanical toys, arrived to boast and swagger and buying by break their main spring's and pass away. And he knew that they were only toys and would never turn into anything else. For nursery. Magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those play things that are old and wise and experienced, like the skin horse understand all about it. What is real? Asked the rabbit one day when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender before Nana came to tidy. The room doesn't mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick out handle really isn't how you're made, said the skin horse. It's a thing that happens to you when a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with but really loves you. Then you become riel. Does it hurt? Asked the rabbit. Sometimes, said the skin horse, for he was always truthful. When you are really you don't mind being hurt, does it happen all at once, like being wound up? He asked. Or bit by bit, It doesn't happen all at once, said the skin horse you become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept generally. By the time you were riel, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are really you can't be ugly except to people who don't understand. I suppose you are Riel, said the rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the skin horse might be sensitive, but the skin horse only smiled. The boy's uncle made me really, he said. That was a great many years ago, but once you were really you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always, the rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called real happened to him. He longed to become riel, to know what it felt like. And yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him. There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery. Sometimes she took no notice of the play, things lying about and sometimes for no reason. Whatever. She went swooping about like a great wind and hustled them away in cupboards. She called this tidying up, and the playthings all hated it, especially that tin ones. The rabbit didn't mind it so much for wherever he was thrown. He came down soft. One evening when the boy was going to bed, he couldn't find the China dog that always slept with him. Nana was in a hurry, and it was too much trouble to hunt for China dogs at bedtime. So she simply looked about her and seeing that the toy cupboard door stood open, she made a swoop here. She said, Take your old bunny, he'll do to sleep with you. And she dragged the rabbit out by one year and put him into the boy's arms that night, and for many nights after the velveteen rabbit slept in the boy's bed. At first he found it rather uncomfortable, for the boy, hugged him very tight, and sometimes he rolled over on him, and sometimes he pushed him so far under the pillow that the rabbit could scarcely breathed. And he missed to those long moonlight hours in the nursery when all the house was silent and his talks with the skin horse. But very soon he grew to like it, for the boy used to talk to him and made nice tunnels for him under the bedclothes that he said were like the boroughs. The real rabbits lived in. And they had splendid games together in whispers when Nana had gone away to her supper and left the night light burning on the mantelpiece, and when the boy dropped off to sleep, the rabbit would snuggle down, close under his little worm chin and dream, with the boy's hands clasped close, round him all night long. And so time went on and the little rabbit was very happy, so happy that he never noticed how his beautiful velveteen fur was getting shabbier and shabbier and his tail coming on sewn and all the pink rubbed off. His knows where the boy had kissed him. Spring came, and they had long days in the garden. For wherever the boy went, the rabbit went to. He had rides in the wheelbarrow and picnics on the grass and lovely fairy huts built for him under the raspberry canes behind the flower border. At once, when the boy was called away suddenly to go out to tea, the rabbit was left out on the lawn until long after dusk, and Nana had to come and look for him with the candle because the boy couldn't go to sleep unless he was there. He was wet through with the do it quite earthy, from diving into the boroughs. The boy had made for him in the flower bed, and Nana grumbled as she rubbed him off with a corner of her apron. 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 Bonny, he said. You mustn't say that he isn't a toy. He's riel. 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.