time the turnips I have mentioned, those that grew in the big field, had
swelled into fine, large bulbs with leafy tops. We used to eat them at
nights, and in the daytime to lie up among them in our snug forms. You
know, Mahatma, don't you, that a form is a little hollow which a hare
makes in the ground just to fit itself? No hare likes to sleep in
another hare's form. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I answered, "I understand. It would be like a man wearing another
man's boots."

"I don't know anything about boots Mahatma, except that they are hard
things with iron on them which kick one out of one's form if one
sits too close. Once that happened to me. Well, my form was under a
particularly fine turnip that had some dead leaves beneath the green
ones. I chose it because, like the brown earth, they just matched the
colour of my back. I was sleeping there quite soundly when my sister
came and woke me.

"There are men in the field," she said, her eyes nearly starting out of
her head with fear, for she was always very timid.

"I'm off."

"Are you?" I answered. "Well, I think I shall stop here where I shan't
be noticed. If we begin jumping over those turnips they will see us."

"We might run down the rows, keeping our ears close to our backs," she
remarked.

"No," I said, "there are too many bare patches."