to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue THERE 

was once a
velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat
and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and paper
and unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of looking at all the new
presents the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten.

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 of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him.
The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one
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 rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of
anything, for he didn’t know that real 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quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.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 was 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, and the only
person who was 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
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 "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. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-
out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are 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 Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"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 are Real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop

of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their
mainsprings 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 playthings that are old and wise and experienced
so far under the pillow that the Rabbit could scarcely breathe. And he
missed, too, 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 burrows the real rabbits lived in. And
they had splendid games together, in whispers, when Nana had gone away
to her supper and left the nightlight burning on the mantelpiece. And when
the Boy dropped off to sleep, the Rabbit would snuggle down close under
his little warm 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 unsewn, and all the pink rubbed off his nose
where the Boy had kissed him.
Spring came, and they had long days in the 
garden, for wherever the Boy went the Rabbit went too. 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. And 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 dew and like the Skin Horse understand all about
it.
white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined ny years ago;
but once you are Real 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 Real, 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 playthings 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 the 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 ear, 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

quite earthy from diving into the burrows the Boy had made for him in the
flower bed, and Nana grumbled as she rubbed him off with a corner of her
apron.
Qwerty gdsfhsjdf out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But
these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be
ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are Real?" 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 Real," he said. "That was a great ma
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