Autumn Down on the Farm Read online

  She said, “I’d love to. I could take pictures of the guests and the wedding party for Chris and Tracy to keep.”

  Everyone in The Green Dragon Inn enjoyed the food and dancing, but Tracy was looking forward to seeing Chris’s face when the magician started his show.

  Dudley and Carol Langley arrived at 6.30 p.m. with June Ellis to set up the magic show. June introduced them to everyone. June said she had come along to report on the wedding for the paper and to take photos.

  At 7 p.m. the magician’s act began. Dudley Langley became Mr Marvellous when he put on his costume covered with moons and stars and his pointed hat. Carol had changed into her posh stage clothes and was now his assistant.

  Mr Marvellous did card, rope and scarf tricks, while Carol made animal shapes out of balloons - first a dog, then a cat, then a horse; and the last one she made looked like Eric and Brandy.

  The final trick was a little unusual. Everyone’s heard of pulling a rabbit out of a top hat, but Mr Marvellous had gone one better. Carol brought on a huge Christmas cake. Mr Marvellous waved his wand and out came a large brown rabbit dressed in a yellow-checked waistcoat; it was Mr Rabbit, the performing rabbit. He bowed to the wedding guests as he’d been taught to do. Could this possibly be Fluffy Senior at last?

  The people in the pub clapped loudly. What an ending to a great magic show!

  Carol had wanted June to see all the rabbits together at the same time, and their performing rabbit too.

  Mr Rabbit looked around the room. When he saw Brandy and Eric he jumped down off the table that the cake had been standing on and hopped across to where Eric and Brandy were sitting.

  “My boys, I have found you at last. Don’t you recognise me? I’m your father, Fluffy Senior.”

  The three rabbits hugged each other, Fluffy Junior watched them.

  Eric looked first at his father, then he said, “Father, what happened to you after we got parted in the woods last year? But first I want you to meet your other son, Fluffy Junior. None of us knew about him, but he came looking for you at the beginning of the year as he was all alone in the world. Our mother passed away and Tiddles the cat saved him from the cold snow and the Evanses took him in.”

  Fluffy Senior hugged the little rabbit. “Son, I’m so proud of you, but I’m so sorry to hear about your mother - I loved her very much. And now we have found each other, we will never be parted again.”

  The wedding guests couldn’t understand the talking going on between the four rabbits, but they could see something was going on as all four rabbits were hopping up and down and racing around each other excitedly.

  June took lots of photos of the happy little family and of the wedding guests. She would put them all in next week’s Rosehill News.

  She looked out of the window and said, “It’s snowing - how lovely.”

  The four rabbits sat under the Christmas tree, so Fluffy Senior could tell his sons what had happened to him in the woods. He told how he had let the two poacher men catch him first easily to let the others have a chance to get away. The plan had worked, but because the two men were afraid of the police catching them, for poaching him, they had gone to one of the pubs in the nearby town to sell him cheaply and quickly. He said Dudley had been in the pub that night playing in a darts match and had bought him as he was worried the two men would sell him to someone who might be cruel to him.

  When Carol and Dudley saw the four rabbits hugging each other, they decided not to take Mr Rabbit away from his family. They told everyone they would get and train another rabbit for the act, and asked Mr and Mrs Evans if they could take the rabbit home with them, back to the farm, so Fluffy Senior and Fluffy Junior could live together. That way Fluffy Senior would be able to see his other two sons in the village too.

  Mr and Mrs Evans agreed to the plan. Fluffy Junior planned to take his father round the farm the next day and to reunite him with his old friend Mr Tawny Owl, down on the Joneses’ farm, next door to the Evanses.

  Tony Harris said, “It’s snowing outside. The last thing to do is to put Jill’s mother’s handmade angel on top of the Christmas tree.”

  This honour was given to Carol Langley. Jill told her the angel was called Vicki - named after Jill and Tracy’s mother, who had made her many years ago. Vicki had spent every Christmas on top of the tree for the last four years in the pub. Carol proudly put Vicki the angel on top of the Christmas tree, where she belonged.

  Everyone was very happy. They had had a lovely time. When the party was over, all the villagers went back to their homes. They all lived happily together in the village and down on the farm.

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