STORY I UNCLE WIGGILY AND MOTHER GOOSE

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old gentleman rabbit, sat in his burrow-house reading the morning paper. It was after breakfast, on a nice, sunny May day, and outside the flowers were blossoming and making perfume and honey for the bees as they nodded their heads in the air. I mean the flowers nodded their heads—not the bees. The bees were far too busy to do that.
 
“Yes,” said Uncle Wiggily to himself, “I think I must get one. They are getting very fashionable and stylish. I certainly must get one for myself,” and he let the paper slip down to the floor, and he sat there in his easy chair, sort of thinking to himself, and nodding his head every now and then, as he said, over and over again:
 
“Yes, I must get one. It will do me more good than riding around in my automobile or going to the seashore.”
 
[Pg 10]
 
“My gracious me sakes alive and some horseradish apple pie!” exclaimed Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady who kept house for Uncle Wiggily. She was out in the kitchen, doing up the dishes, and she heard what the old rabbit gentleman had said, though he did not think she had.
 
“I wonder what it is he is going to do now?” Nurse Jane said to herself. “He’s been so funny lately—doing those queer new dances—the corn meal flop, the apple dumpling dip and the machoo-choo slide. I hope he isn’t going to do anything more foolish. I wonder what it is?”
 
But Uncle Wiggily didn’t tell Nurse Jane—at least just then. He got up, put on his fur coat—oh, listen to me, would you! A fur coat in May! I mean Uncle Wiggily put on his light coat, and without wearing a hat, which he never did in the summer, out he went, leaving Nurse Jane to wonder what it was he was going to do.
 
Uncle Wiggily went to a store where they sold toy circus balloons, and of the monkey gentleman who kept the store he asked:
 
“Have you any flying machines?”
 
“What do you mean—flying machines?” asked the monkey gentleman. “Do you mean birds?”
 
“Well, birds are flying machines, of course,”[Pg 11] the rabbit gentleman said. “But I mean a sort of airship that I could go up in as if I were in a balloon, and fly around in the clouds. I am going to get one of those airships for a change.”
 
“Ha!” exclaimed the monkey gentleman. “You certainly are a queer one, Uncle Wiggily, to want to do that. But I am sorry to say I have no airships.”
 
“Then I will have to make one,” said the rabbit. “Please give me some of your balloons.”
 
Uncle Wiggily took some red balloons, two blue ones, a green one, a pink one and one colored skilligimink, which is a very funny color. It was like the Easter egg dye color into which Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy, once fell, getting all splashed up.
 
“I don’t see how you are going to make an airship out of those toy balloons,” said the monkey gentleman.
 
“I’ll show you,” spoke Uncle Wiggily. “I next need a clothes basket. I’ll leave my balloons here until I get that. You see,” the old rabbit gentleman went on, “I want to surprise my housekeeper, Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy. She doesn’t know I’m going to have an airship,” and Uncle Wiggily winked both eyes, sort of comical like, and twinkled his nose as if he were going to sneeze.
 
[Pg 12]
 
He went off to get the clothes basket, and when he had it he fastened the toy balloons to it by strings tied to the handles.
 
“There!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “You see, the toy balloons will lift up the clothes basket and me in it. That will be an airship.”
 
“But will it sail in the air?” asked the monkey gentleman.
 
“To be sure it will,” Uncle Wiggily said. “To make it go forward I am going to put an electric fan in the back of the clothes basket. The fan will whizz around and push the air away, and when the air is pushed out of the way I can shoot ahead, and I’ll be sailing. Now you watch me, if you please.”
 
So the rabbit gentleman tied the balloons to the clothes basket, and he made the basket fast to the ground with some clothes-pins, so it wouldn’t go up before he was ready for it. Next he got an electric fan, which goes around whizzie-izzie and makes the air cool on a hot day, and the rabbit gentleman fastened this fan on the back of his clothes basket.
 
“Now I have my airship,” Uncle Wiggily said to the monkey gentleman. “I shall go up and sail to my burrow. I think Nurse Jane will be surprised.”
 
[Pg 13]
 
Uncle Wiggily started to climb into the basket.
 
“Wait! Wait!” called the monkey gentleman, who had sold him the toy balloons.
 
“What is the matter?” asked Uncle Wiggily.
 
“You had better take some soft sofa cushions in with you,” spoke the monkey gentleman. “You—you might fall in your airship, you know,” he whispered, sort of bashful like, “and the cushions would be a good thing to fall on.”
 
“I believe you are right,” Uncle Wiggily answered. “Thank you! I’ll take a few.”
 
So he put some sofa cushions in the clothes basket.
 
“Now I am ready!” he called. “Please take off the clothes-pins and I will go up. I am going to sail like the airship-birdmen I read of in the newspaper this morning.”
 
The monkey gentleman took the clothes-pins off the ropes that held down Uncle Wiggily’s airship and pop-up it went, lifted by the toy balloons—red, green, blue, orange and skilligimink color.
 
“Now, here I go!” cried the rabbit gentleman, as he started the electric fan. And, surely enough, through the air he sailed, as nicely as you please, right above the tree tops, in his new airship he flew.
 
[Pg 14]
 
“Oh, this is great!” cried Uncle Wiggily. Pretty soon he was right over his house. “I’m always going to travel this way, from now on,” he said. “Airships are fine.”
 
And then, all of a sudden, something happened. Mother Goose, who happened to be flying through the air on a broomstick, that day, accidentally dropped a paper of pins she had just bought. They fell down with their sharp points on Uncle Wiggily’s balloons, that were fastened to the clothes-basket. The balloons burst, “Pop! Pop! Poppity! Pop! Pop!” and down fell the clothes-basket airship, Uncle Wiggily and all.
 
“Oh dear!” cried Mother Goose.
 
Right down in front of his own door Uncle Wiggily fell and only for the soft cushions he might have been hurt. As it was, his rheumatism was jarred up a little.
 
“Oh, my!” cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, rushing out of the house. “What is this? What has happened, Wiggy?”
 
“Why, this is my new airship,” answered the rabbit gentleman, sort of dazed and puzzled like. “I just made it and I came along to surprise you.”
 
“Well, you surprised me all right,” said Nurse Jane. “Now, come in the house and I’ll rub your back with witch hazel. You must be all[Pg 15] bruised! You had better leave airships alone after this.”
 
“I guess I had,” said Uncle Wiggily sadly.
 
But do you s’pose he did? Not a bit of it. He was right at it again next day, and in the story after this, if the rose bush doesn’t scratch the eyes out of the potato salad, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily up a tree.
 
STORY II UNCLE WIGGILY UP A TREE

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old gentleman rabbit, walked out in front of his burrow house one morning, and looked at his new airship. He limped a little, for you know he had had a fall the day before, tumbling down almost out of the clouds. But he fell on some sofa cushions, that the monkey gentleman had put in the clothes basket part of the airship, so Mr. Longears was not much hurt—only his rheumatism was sort of twisted.
 
I guess I told you, did I not, how Uncle Wiggily made himself an airship out of some toy balloons, a clothes basket, and an electric fan? He thought he would fly through the air for a while, instead of riding around in his automobile.
 
But Mother Goose had accidentally dropped a lot of pins on the toy balloons that lifted up the airship, and when the balloons burst, with loud “pops,” the airship came down “ker-floppo!”—if you will kindly excuse me for saying so.
 
[Pg 17]
 
So Uncle Wiggily walked out in front of his burrow, or underground house, and looked at his broken airship.
 
“I’m afraid it will never sail again!” said Uncle Wiggily, sadly, as he noticed the burst balloons and the clothes basket, which had quite a dent in one of the handles. The electric fan was not hurt at all, I am glad to say, only it had stopped whizzing around, of course.
 
“It’s too bad!” Uncle Wiggily went on. “My nice airship, that I thought would take me sailing all over, is broken. I can’t go riding in it again.”
 
“What!” cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, who kept house for the rabbit gentleman. “You don’t mean to tell me that you would ever go sailing again in an airship, after what happened; would you?”
 
“I certainly would,” answered Uncle Wiggily, as he combed out his whiskers with a shoestring. “I would love to go airshipping again.”
 
“Well, well!” cried Nurse Jane. “This is worse than dancing the clam chowder clip! I am certainly surprised at you.”
 
“But you don’t need to worry,” said Uncle Wiggily. “My airship is broken, so there is not much danger of me going sailing again.”
 
[Pg 18]
 
“I am glad of it,” said Nurse Jane, “for your sake.”
 
“Oh, ho!” exclaimed a voice from behind the ice cream freezer, “something broken, eh? Well, perhaps I can fix it,” and out stepped Dr. Possum, with his satchel of red, white and blue pills. “What is broken?” he asked. “Anybody’s legs or arms?”
 
“My airship,” replied Uncle Wiggily. “The balloons that lift it up into the air are all burst from Mother Goose’s pins.”
 
“Ha! Buy new balloons!” cried Dr. Possum. “That’s easy!”
 
“The very thing!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “I never thought of that. But the clothes basket has a dent in it.”
 
“Oh, as to that, I can easily fix the dent,” said Dr. Possum. “I am used to fixing dents. I can do harder things than that. You go get some more new toy balloons, and I’ll fix the basket. You shall have your airship again.”
 
“Oh, dear me and some molasses pancakes!” cried Nurse Jane. “I can see a lot more trouble ahead for Uncle Wiggily if he is going around in an airship. I had better buy some court-plaster at the five and six cent store, for he will need it. He is sure to fall again, and get all cut and bruised.”
 
[Pg 19]
 
So Nurse Jane kindly went to the store for the court-plaster. Dr. Possum mended the dent in the clothes basket, and Uncle Wiggily went after the toy balloons. He got some red, green, yellow and sky-blue-pink ones, and soon his airship was made over as good as ever again.
 
“Now watch me sail in it!” the rabbit gentleman cried, as he got into the clothes basket, to which the balloons and electric fan were fastened. “I’m going away up to the clouds this time.”
 
“Well, I only hope you don’t fall,” said Nurse Jane, sort of anxious like.
 
“I’ve got the soft sofa cushions under me, if I do,” answered Uncle Wiggily, with a laugh.
 
Up he went, high in the air, the electric fan going whizzie-izzie, and the balloons lifting the clothes basket off the ground.
 
Well, Uncle Wiggily in his airship, sailed on and on, and pretty soon, all of a sudden, quick-like, it began to hail. There was a hard hail storm. And hail, you know, is frozen rain. Down pelted the round hail stones on Uncle Wiggily and his airship.
 
“Oh, me! Oh, my, and some lolly-pops!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I think something is going to happen.” And just then a hail stone hit on the end of his twinkling nose, making him sneeze—“ker-cher! Ker-choo!”
 
[Pg 20]
 
Then something else happened. More hail stones came down, and “Pop! Pop! Pop!” went the toy balloons, bursting one after another, as the hard hail hit them, just as when the Mother Goose pins had pricked them.
 
“Oh, dear! I’m going to fall again!” cried the rabbit gentleman, for he knew when the balloons burst there would be nothing to hold him and his clothesbasket airship up above the earth.
 
And, surely enough, he began to fall. Down and down he went, with the hail falling all around him.
 
“My! I hope the sofa cushions don’t fall out of my clothes basket!” thought the rabbit gentleman, “for if they do I will get a very hard bump.”
 
But, as it happened, he did not need the soft cushions, for, all of a sudden, his airship turned over, and he fell into a tree, spilling right out, and landing in the branches. Luckily, there were green leaves on them, and they made a soft place on which Uncle Wiggily fell. He was scratched some, but Nurse Jane’s court plaster would fix that. The airship, however, kept on falling until it landed on the ground at the foot of the tree.
 
“Oh, I wonder how I am to get down?” said Uncle Wiggily. “It is very far from the top of this tree to the earth, and I cannot climb, as the[Pg 21] Bushytail squirrel boys, or as Kittie Kat can. What shall I do? Oh, dear!”
 
And just then along came Johnnie Bushytail, the squirrel boy, himself.
 
“I’ll help you get down!” called Johnnie to Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll get a rope, and climb up with it to you. Then you can make a rope ladder, fasten one end to a limb of the tree, and climb down that.”
 
“Fine!” cried Uncle Wiggily. The little squirrel boy found a grape vine rope, and up the tree he scrambled, carrying one end of it up to Uncle Wiggily, who soon made a rope ladder, such as sailors use. Then the rabbit gentleman came down on that as nicely as you please.
 
“Well, my airship is badly broken,” he said, as he looked at the burst balloons and the bent and twisted clothes basket. “I shall have to fix it before I can sail again.”
 
“Do you mean to tell me you are going up in that dangerous thing again?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, as she stuck a piece of red, white and blue court plaster on Uncle Wiggily’s nose, where the hail stone had hit him.
 
“I am going to try,” he said, modest like, and shy.
 
“Oh, dear me, and some popcorn cakes!” cried[Pg 22] Nurse Jane. “I never saw such a rabbit—never!”
 
Then Uncle Wiggily got old dog Percival, with the express wagon, to cart home the broken airship. And in the story after this, if the ice cream cone doesn’t jump up and down on the tablecloth, and poke holes in the loaf of bread, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the little birds.
STORY III UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE LITTLE BIRDS

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old rabbit gentleman, was out in his yard one day, whistling away, hammering and sawing and making his funny nose twinkle like a star on a frosty night in June. He could not twinkle his nose so very well because it had on it a piece of red, white and blue court plaster. And the reason he had the plaster there was because the last time he was out in his airship, he had had an accident, and a hailstone had struck him on the nose, as I have told you.
 
You just try to make your nose twinkle with a piece of court plaster on it, and see how hard it is. It’s almost as hard as it is to stand on your head and peel a basket of soap bubbles.
 
But still Uncle Wiggily was doing the best he could, and, as I have said, he was whistling and hammering and sawing.
 
“What in the world are you doing?” asked[Pg 24] Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, who kept house for Uncle Wiggily.
 
“I am fixing my airship,” he said. You know he had one, made of a clothes basket, with an electric fan to send it along through the air whizzy-izzie-like, and to lift the airship Uncle Wiggily used a lot of toy circus balloons, tied together.
 
“Going up in your airship!” cried Nurse Jane. “Why, you were out in it the other day, and look what a terrible fall you had. The hailstones burst your balloons and down you came in a tree. And Johnnie Bushytail, the squirrel, had to get you a wild grape vine rope so you could climb down.”
 
“I know he did,” said Uncle Wiggily, cheerful-like. “And I am very thankful to him.”
 
“And still, and with all that happened to you, getting your nose scratched and all that, are you again going up in your airship?” Nurse Jane wanted to know.
 
“I am going up,” said Uncle Wiggily bravely. “I want to learn how to sail all over the world in my airship.”
 
“But suppose another hailstorm comes and smashes your balloons?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy. “You will fall again, and you may be hurt worse next time.”
 
[Pg 25]
 
“No more hailstones can bother me!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “See, I am going to fasten an umbrella over my toy balloons, and then no hailstones can hit them.” And he whistled more cheerfully than before.
 
“Well, I do declare!” exclaimed Nurse Jane. “You are surely odd!”
 
Uncle Wiggily really was fastening a Japanese umbrella over his funny clothes basket airship.
 
“The umbrella will keep off the sun as well as the rain and hail,” he said happy-like.
 
Well, the old gentleman rabbit was just getting ready to go up in his airship again, when, from among the leaves of a tree that grew in his garden, he heard a voice saying:
 
“Now, birdies, it is time you learned to fly. Stand on the limb, where our nest is built, flutter your wings as I do, and jump off. Keep your wings fluttering and you will be flying.”
 
“Oh, but we are afraid!” cried several tiny chirping voices.
 
“Ha! That is a mother bird teaching her little ones to fly,” said Uncle Wiggily, as he looked up. “I must watch this. I love little birds.”
 
“Don’t be afraid,” said the mamma bird to the[Pg 26] children birds. “You will not fall. When I was a little bird I was afraid, too, but nothing happened to me and I have been flying ever since. Come now, jump off the tree branch into the air.”
 
“Oh, we’re afraid!” cried the littlest of the birdies.
 
“Our wings might come off, and then we’d drop to the ground,” said another little bird, as it fluttered back into the nest.
 
“Nonsense!” cried the mamma bird. “Your wings will not drop off and you will not fall. You must learn to fly now. You are getting old enough to fly for yourselves. Come, Pickie!” she called to the one who had gone back in the nest, “stand in line with the others and learn to fly.”
 
“Oh, mamma! I can’t! Really I can’t!” cried Pickie, who was given that name because he had such a sharp little bill for picking up bread crumbs.
 
“You must learn to fly,” said the mamma bird. “Your papa will soon be home, and think how proud he will be if you can fly to meet him!”
 
“Oh, we are afraid,” said the little birds.
 
It is just like when baby first learns to walk. At the beginning he is afraid to take a step alone, but soon he grows braver and toddles all over.
 
[Pg 27]
 
“Come! Fly!” called the mamma bird.
 
“We are afraid—afraid!” chirped the little birdies.
 
“Ha! I think I can help the mamma bird give them their flying lesson,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I will go up in my airship and float slowly along. I will keep right under the little birds, and I’ll tell them that if their wings give out, and if they fall, they will land on my umbrella and not get hurt at all.”
 
So away he went in his airship, and when he got near the top of the tree, with the electric fan buzzing and the toy balloons lifting him up, the rabbit gentleman called:
 
“See me, birdies! I am flying, and you know a rabbit has no wings. Look!”
 
“Exactly,” said the mamma bird. “See, little ones! If Uncle Wiggily is not afraid to fly, you should not be, for you were made on purpose for sailing through the air, and he was not.”
 
“And I’ll keep right under you with my airship, to catch you if you fall,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Don’t be afraid, birdies!”
 
“All right! Here we come!” cried Pickie, getting brave all of a sudden. Off the limb he fluttered, and his brothers and sisters fluttered after him, flapping their wings.
 
[Pg 28]
 
“Oh, we are flying!” they cried joyfully. “We can fly!”
 
“I knew you could,” called their mamma, soaring on her wings after them. “And how proud your papa will be! Thank you so much, Uncle Wiggily, for making my birdies brave enough to fly.”
 
“Pray do not mention it,” answered the rabbit gentleman politely, as he sailed about in his airship.
 
He kept under the little birds for a while, in case they might fall, but none of them did, and soon they fluttered back to the nest for supper. They had learned to fly and were not afraid any more. Wasn’t that good?
 
And in the next story, if the dish doesn’t run away with the spoon and go to the moving picture show in our back yard, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and Grandfather Goosey Gander.
 
STORY IV UNCLE WIGGILY AND GRANDPA GOOSEY
 
“Well, where are you going to-day?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, of Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, as she saw him putting on his red necktie and starting out toward the barn where he kept his airship.
 
“Where am I going?” he repeated. “Well, to tell you the truth, Nurse Jane, I hardly know.”
 
“Out in your airship, I suppose,” she said, as she looked in the bread box to see if there was any rice pudding for the pussy cat to play store with.
 
“Oh, yes, I am going to fly about a bit,” said the rabbit gentleman. “Perhaps I may have an adventure; who knows?”
 
“Well, I know one thing you will have if you go flying around in that airship of yours,” said Nurse Jane, putting on her apron to peel the oranges for the clam chowder. “You’ll have a fall; that’s what you’ll have. And you’ll skin[Pg 30] your nose and stub your toes and maybe rub off the fur from your ears for all I know.”
 
“Oh, I trust not! I trust not!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily quickly, holding up his paws. “I hope nothing like that will happen. The last time I rode in my airship I did not fall—when I helped to teach the little birds to fly.”
 
“Well, I’m sure you’ll fall this time,” spoke Nurse Jane.
 
“You are not very cheerful this morning,” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “Have no fear; I will come back safe and sound.”
 
“Well, all the same, you had better take some court-plaster along in case you scratch your twinkling nose on a bramble briar bush,” said the muskrat lady. So Uncle Wiggily took the court-plaster with him.
 
Then he went for a ride in his queer airship. I call it queer because it was very odd. The old rabbit gentleman’s airship was made of a clothes basket, with a lot of toy circus balloons tied to it to make it rise up. In back there was a whizzy electric fan to make the airship go along like an automobile, and there was a baby carriage wheel to steer it by. On top of all this was a big Japanese umbrella fastened over the balloons, to keep hail stones from pelting holes in them and making them burst.
 
[Pg 31]
 
That happened once, and Uncle Wiggily and his airship had a dreadful fall, just like Humpty-Dumpty.
 
“But I’ll not fall to-day,” said Uncle Wiggily, as he got in the clothes basket and sat on the sofa cushions.
 
He had taken the airship outside the barn, and as he loosed the string that held it fast, up it shot into the air, just like a balloon. Then Uncle Wiggily started the electric fan, and away he went as nicely as you please.
 
“Oh, there he goes!” cried Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbit children, as they stood on the ground below, and watched him. “Please take us for a ride, Uncle Wiggily!” they begged.
 
“Not now, my dears,” he said kindly. “Some other time I will. You must go to school now.”
 
So Sammie and Susie hopped on to school, and Uncle Wiggily traveled along in his airship.
 
“I wonder what sort of an adventure I will have?” he said. “Ha! I have it! I will go call on Grandfather Goosey Gander. I will take him for a ride.”
 
He went to the old goose gentleman’s pen, but when he got there, and invited Grandpa Goosey to get into the clothes basket, Grandpa Goosey said:
 
“What! Trust myself in an airship, high[Pg 32] above the ground? No, indeed, thank you, Uncle Wiggily. I have no use for airships. They are too dangerous! They are no good!”
 
“I am sorry you think so, and will not come with me,” said Uncle Wiggily, sort of sadly like. “I think airships are fine. I am going off looking for an adventure.”
 
“And I am going to the woods to gather acorns for my kitchen fire,” said the goose gentleman. “But I am going to walk. It is safer, by far. Airships are not good for animals like us.”
 
“Well, I think they are,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, as he rose in the air again.
 
The rabbit gentleman circled around, flying along in his clothes basket airship, and he was having a fine ride. But no adventure happened to him. By and by, after a while, not so very long, Uncle Wiggily found himself flying over a big woods.
 
“I wonder if this is the forest where Grandfather Goosey went to gather acorns?” thought Uncle Wiggily. “If it is, maybe he will be so tired, if he is here, that he will be glad to ride home in my airship.”
 
Pretty soon the old rabbit gentleman heard a loud quacking noise.
 
 
He looked down, and what do you think he [Pg 33]saw? Why, the old goose gentleman was caught fast in a trap by both legs. Some hunter had set a trap to catch a fox, and poor Grandfather Goosey Gander had stepped into it by mistake. There he was, held fast.
 
“Oh, dear!” cried Grandpa Goosey. “What shall I do? I have tried to get out and I can’t. I have called for help, but no one comes to me. I am away off in the woods alone, and here I must die in the trap. Oh, I wish I had even gone in Uncle Wiggily’s airship! Oh, will no one help me?”
 
“Yes, I will help you!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “Here I am, Grandpa Goosey!” And wasn’t the goose gentleman surprised, when he looked up and saw his rabbit friend in the airship over his head? Oh, he certainly was surprised.
 
Uncle Wiggily made his airship go down, and then he soon helped Grandpa Goosey out of the fox trap. He put some court-plaster on the goose gentleman’s scratched legs and asked:
 
“Now will you ride home in my airship?”
 
“Indeed I will,” said Grandpa Goosey. “Airships are good after all. I am sorry I said they were not.”
 
“Pray do not mention such a thing. I knew you didn’t mean it,” Uncle Wiggily said. Then[Pg 34] he and Grandpa Goosey rode safely home through the air, and, if the blackbird on our fence doesn’t pick all the clothes pins off the chocolate cake, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the fire.
 
STORY V UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE FIRE

“What do you think, mamma!” cried Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy, as he came running in the house after school one fine day. “Oh, what do you think?”
 
“Why, I’m sure I don’t know, Sammie, my dear,” said Mrs. Littletail, smiling at him. “I think of a great many things, of course.”
 
“Oh, he means what do you think teacher told us!” cried Sammie’s sister Susie, as she came in more slowly, for girl rabbits cannot run quite as fast as can rabbit boys.
 
“Did your teacher say you were good little animal children to-day, and that you had your lessons well?” Mrs. Littletail wanted to know.
 
“Well, she did say that,” spoke Sammie, sort of bashful like and shy, “but I think you can’t guess what I mean. She said we ought to make a little garden, each for ourselves, and grow things to eat in it. The one who has the best garden will get a prize.”
 
[Pg 36]
 
“And I’m going to have a garden and raise lettuce!” cried Susie.
 
“And I’m going to have one and plant carrots. And I’m going to give Uncle Wiggily some!” added Sammie.
 
“It will be very nice for each of you to make a garden,” said the rabbit children’s mamma. “You may each have a little part of our big garden for yourselves.”
 
“And we are to do all the work, too,” explained Sammie. “We must clear off the ground, spade it up, rake it smooth, put in the seeds and water them when they come up.”
 
“Oh, of course, if it’s your garden, you must look after it yourselves,” said Mrs. Littletail.
 
So Sammie and Susie began to make their garden. First they raked away the brush, sticks and leaves from the ground that was to be dug up. This brush they piled in a big heap in the large garden.
 
“That pile of brush does not look very nice there,” said their mamma.
 
“Oh, we are going to burn it when we get through,” said Sammie. “Teacher said we were to burn up all trash and rubbish, for the ashes were good to mix with the garden dirt. I don’t know why, but ashes make the ground better.”
 
“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Littletail, “but you had[Pg 37] better let your papa burn the brush. He will have more brush when he rakes up the ground for his garden. Animal or real children should not play with fire,” said the mamma rabbit.
 
So Sammie and Susie Littletail went on making their garden, and in it they planted cabbage, radishes, lettuce and carrots—all things that rabbits love to eat. A few days later their papa, Mr. Littletail, the rabbit gentleman, made his garden, and he raked up a big pile of brush. When the garden was all nice and smooth Mr. Littletail said:
 
“Now I will burn that brush.”
 
“And may we watch you?” asked Sammie.
 
“Yes, if you do not come too close,” his papa said.
 
Mr. Littletail set fire to the big pile of dried brush, sticks and leaves, and my goodness me sakes alive and some peanut pancakes! How it did blaze up! It crackled like the Fourth of July, and the heat was so great that Mr. Littletail had to jump back very quickly.
 
“Oh, what a fine fire!” cried Susie.
 
“We could roast potatoes in it if it were not so large,” spoke Sammie. “But it is too hot now.”
 
“Indeed it is,” his father said. “Keep back.”
 
Hotter and hotter grew the brush fire. The[Pg 38] blaze leaped up, and then every one had to run far away. The fire grew so hot that the Littletail house began to smoke and scorch.
 
“Oh, our house will catch fire from the brush!” cried Sammie.
 
“Yes, I am afraid it will!” exclaimed Mr. Littletail. “I must get some pails of water and throw on the brush fire.”
 
But, by this time, the fire was so hot that, when Mr. Littletail had the water, he could not get near enough to toss it on the blaze.
 
“Oh, what shall we do!” cried his wife. “Our house will burn down! Oh, I must save what I can!”
 
So she threw the clock and a lot of her best dishes out of the window, and they were broken, I am sorry to say. Then Mrs. Littletail carefully carried out the feather bed. You see she was so excited that she did things backwards. She should have thrown the feather bed out of the window, for that would not break. And she ought to have carried the clock and dishes down stairs in her apron.
 
Hotter and hotter grew the fire, and the rabbit house was beginning to smoke and blaze.
 
“Call out the water bug fire department!” shouted Grandfather Goosey Gander. But the[Pg 39] water bugs had gone away on an excursion, and could not come.
 
“Oh, my lovely house will burn!” cried Mrs. Littletail.
 
“No, I know how to save it!” shouted Sammie. “I’ll go get Uncle Wiggily Longears in his airship. We can go up in the air over the fire and spill a pail of water on it. He won’t be burned as he will be so high up, but the water will put out the fire.”
 
“Go and get him quickly then!” shouted Mr. Littletail hopping up and down on his big ears.
 
Uncle Wiggily came sailing along in his airship right away when Sammie called him. The rabbit gentleman took up with him many pails of water, and when he had steered his airship high up over the fire, where he was out of danger, Uncle Wiggily spilled down the water, just like rain from the clouds, and the fire hissed like a snake, and went out.
 
The brush was all burned up, of course, and the Littletail house was scorched on the roof, but not very much. Uncle Wiggily had put it out just in time.
 
“But if it hadn’t been for your airship I don’t know what we would have done!” cried Mr. Littletail. “Thank you so much!”
 
“Pray do not mention it,” said Uncle Wiggily[Pg 40] politely, as he wagged his tail up and down as well as sideways.
 
Then the rabbit gentleman helped pick up the broken dishes, and he mended the broken clock and all was well. And Mr. Littletail did not make such a big brush fire again.
 
And on the next page, if the carpenter man doesn’t take our bathtub away to slide his little puppy dog down hill in, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and Dr. Possum.
 
STORY VI UNCLE WIGGILY HELPS DR. POSSUM

“Off again, I see!” Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, exclaimed one morning to Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, for whom she kept house. “Off again, Wiggy!”
 
You see she called him Wiggy as a sort of pet name.
 
“Yes, I am off again,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, as he put some extra soft cushions in his clothes basket airship. “I am going on a long trip this time.”
 
“Pray, where are you going?” asked the muskrat lady. “That is, if you do not mind me asking,” she said quickly.
 
“Oh, not at all. I don’t mind telling you,” Uncle Wiggily answered. “I am going to see if I can find an adventure.”
 
“Oh, such a queer old rabbit gentleman as you are, Wiggy,” said Nurse Jane with a laugh. “Instead of sitting quietly at home here, making[Pg 42] a garden, or reading, you go chasing off across the country in that funny airship of yours. Something is sure to happen to you!”
 
“Well, the things that happen are adventures,” said Uncle Wiggily. “And I like the nice ones. Of course I do not like to fall out of my airship, as I sometimes do, but that cannot be helped. I always have a little red white and blue court-plaster with me to put on any scratches I may get.
 
“And now, Nurse Jane, I’ll say good-by. I am going to look for an adventure.”
 
Into his airship, made of a clothes basket, some toy balloons, a Japanese umbrella and an electric fan, Uncle Wiggily placed himself. Then he sailed up in the air, farther and farther, until he was higher than the birds.
 
All of a sudden, as he was riding along, thinking what fun it was to have an airship, the rabbit gentleman heard some one down on the ground below crying:
 
“Oh dear! Oh, who will help me?”
 
“Ha! I wonder who that is,” said Uncle Wiggily. So he looked over the edge of the clothes basket and he saw Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady, running up and down in front of her pen-house, flapping her wings, all excited-like.
 
[Pg 43]
 
“Ha! Trouble!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll go down and see what it is.” Down he went in his airship.
 
“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” cried Mrs. Wibblewobble. “My boy, Jimmie, is very ill, and I have no one to send for Dr. Possum. Will you go?”
 
“Indeed I will!” the rabbit gentleman said. “I’ll make him come right back with me and cure Jimmie.”
 
Off Uncle Wiggily sailed again in his airship, but when he got to Dr. Possum’s office the old gentleman animal physician made the same fuss about an airship as Grandfather Goosey Gander, the goose gentleman, did at first.
 
“If you’ll get in with me I’ll ride you straight to the Wibblewobble duck house, and you can cure Jimmie,” said the rabbit gentleman.
 
“What! Trust myself in a clothes basket away up in the air? Never; thank you just the same!” cried Dr. Possum. “I’ll come along, as I always do, on my own legs.”
 
“Well, if you won’t come with me, I suppose you won’t,” Uncle Wiggily said. “But I’ll ride on ahead and tell them you are on the way.”
 
“All right, only I am sure I will get there before you,” spoke Dr. Possum. “I do not think much of airships.”
 
[Pg 44]
 
“Neither did Grandpa Goosey Gander, at first,” said the rabbit gentleman with a laugh.
 
Off started Dr. Possum through the woods, carrying his bag of medicine on his tail. Overhead Uncle Wiggily started in his airship. And of course Uncle Wiggily reached the Wibblewobble house first, for airships can go very fast, you know.
 
“Where is Dr. Possum?” asked Mrs. Wibblewobble, who was waiting outside. “My little duck boy is very ill.”
 
“The doctor is coming,” said Uncle Wiggily. “He would not ride with me; he walked.” Well, they waited and they waited, but no Dr. Possum came. Meanwhile Jimmie was getting worse. He had cocoanut-cake-fever, which is very bad.
 
“I guess I’ll sail back in my airship and see what keeps Dr. Possum,” Uncle Wiggily said. “Perhaps something has happened to him.”
 
And there had! Just think of it. I’ll tell you how it was.
 
“I’ll show Uncle Wiggily that I can go faster than his airship!” laughed Dr. Possum to himself, as he started out from his office. “I’ll take a short cut through the woods and get there first, airship or no airship.”
 
Well, he took the short cut all right, but when he came to a mud puddle and tried to jump over,[Pg 45] he slipped, and down he came in it with both hind feet.
 
And the mud was so sticky that Dr. Possum was stuck there. No matter how he pulled he could not pull himself loose.
 
“Oh, this is terrible!” he cried. “I may have to stay here all night, and I can’t cure poor, sick Jimmie. This is very sad!”
 
And it was there, stuck in the mud puddle, that Uncle Wiggily found Dr. Possum.
 
“Oh, ho!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “So there you are!” and he looked down on the animal docter from overhead in his airship.
 
“Oh, please help me out!” cried Dr. Possum.
 
“Of course I will,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll drop you a piece of clothesline. Fasten it about your waist and I’ll tie one end up here on the clothesbasket and pull you out by my airship.”
 
When the clothesline was fast around Dr. Possum, Uncle Wiggily made the electric fan wheel of the airship go very fast and hard. And then slowly at first, but soon faster and faster, out of the mud Dr. Possum was pulled by the clothesline.
 
“Now I guess I’d better take you the rest of the way to the Wibblewobble house in this airship,[Pg 46] then you won’t get stuck in the mud again,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly.
 
“I guess so,” said Dr. Possum. And when he reached Jimmie’s house he soon cured the duck boy. Then Mrs. Wibblewobble helped wash the mud off the animal physician, and Dr. Possum rode home again in Uncle Wiggily’s airship.
 
“Airships are better and more useful than I thought,” said Dr. Possum, as he got out.
 
“You are just like Grandfather Goosey Gander,” said Uncle Wiggily with a laugh. “You have changed your mind.”
 
So that’s how the rabbit gentleman helped his friend, and on the next page, if the man beating rugs in our back yard doesn’t put the clothes post in his pocket and take it away for an umbrella handle, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the moth balls.
STORY VII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE MOTH BALLS

“There it goes! Get it!” suddenly cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, one night, making a jump up from the rocking chair where she was sitting, sewing up the holes in the coffee strainer.
 
“My goodness me sakes alive and some cheese pudding!” cried Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, who was reading the evening paper in his hollow stump bungalow near the underground house. “Have you dropped your ball of yarn, Nurse Jane, or did you see Jilly Longtail, the mousie?”
 
“Neither one,” answered Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy, who kept house for Uncle Wiggily. “Oh, there’s another! Hit it quick before it gets upstairs!” she cried, making a grab for something in the air.
 
“Well, this is certainly surprising!” Uncle Wiggily exclaimed. “I see nothing!”
 
He looked at Nurse Jane, who was making[Pg 48] funny motions in the air, waving her paws about and clapping them together.
 
“You don’t see anything?” the muskrat lady cried. “Why, the place is full of moths. They will eat everything up!”
 
“Will they eat up my turnip sandwich?” Uncle Wiggily wanted to know.
 
“Oh, not that,” replied Nurse Jane. “They are not like foxes, or bears. Moths are little things that first flit about like butterflies. Then they find a nice, cosy, soft bed in your fur coat, or your flannel shirts, and they lay eggs. Then out of the egg comes a little insect that eats up the fur and flannel. They even eat pianos!”
 
“My gracious!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “They must be regular giants to eat pianos! I never heard of such a thing!”
 
“Well, of course they don’t exactly eat the whole piano,” said Nurse Jane, as she made another grab in the air, trying to catch the moth-butterfly. But she missed it and knocked off Uncle Wiggily’s spectacles. Very luckily, however, the glasses fell on the soft back of Kittie Kat, who had come over to Uncle Wiggily’s house to borrow a cup of flour to make a bouquet for her school teacher, and so the glasses were not broken.
 
[Pg 49]
 
“Moths must be terrible things!” said Uncle Wiggily, as he put on his spectacles again. “Fancy, now; eating pianos!”
 
“Well, I mean they eat the felt cloth inside the pianos, and so spoil them for playing,” went on Nurse Jane. “But we must get busy, Uncle Wiggily. To-morrow you must go up in your airship and buy me some moth balls.”
 
“I didn’t know moths played ball,” said the rabbit gentleman. “They certainly are strange creatures, to eat pianos and play ball!”
 
“Oh, of course, moths don’t play ball!” Nurse Jane said. “How silly you are, Wiggily. Moth balls are white balls that smell very strongly of camphor and other things that moths do not like. If you put moth balls in your fur and flannels the moths will go away.”
 
“Where will they go?” asked Uncle Wiggily.
 
“I don’t know. Please don’t ask so many questions,” Nurse Jane answered, as she tried to catch another moth. And this time she stepped on Kittie’s tail and the little cat girl meaowed: said:
 
“Oh, dear! I guess I had better go home.”
 
“Oh, please excuse me!” begged Nurse Jane. “But I must get these moths out of the way.”
 
“I’ll get the moth balls to-morrow,” Uncle Wiggily promised, “and if there are any balls[Pg 50] left over I will give them to Sammie Littletail to play marbles with.”
 
“Well, the next day the old rabbit gentleman started off in his airship to get the moth balls for Nurse Jane. He found them in a drug store, and the monkey gentleman who kept the place put the white balls in a box for Uncle Wiggily, so he could easily carry them.
 
“I hope you have no trouble, going back in your airship,” said the monkey gentleman, politely.
 
“Thank you,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I think I shall be all right.” Then he sailed back toward his house with the moth balls, and on the way he heard down below him some voices saying:
 
“Oh, dear! Isn’t it too bad?”
 
“Yes, if we only had some marbles we could have a nice game!”
 
“But we haven’t any!” cried a third voice, sadly.
 
Uncle Wiggily looked down, and in the schoolyard, over which he was flying in his airship, he saw Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy, Bully and Bawly No-Tail, the frogs, Jackie and Peetie Bow-Wow, the puppies, and many other animal friends. They wanted to have a game of marbles, but could not.
 
“I’ll just drop them down a few of the moth[Pg 51] balls; I have plenty,” said Uncle Wiggily. So he did, taking care not to let any of the balls fall on the animal boys.
 
“Oh joy!” the little chaps cried, when they saw the white balls. “These will make fine marbles!” And they had a great game.
 
A little farther along Uncle Wiggily saw some toy wooden soldiers who were going to shoot their pop guns at a mark for practice, so that they might become good marksmen in time of war.
 
“Oh, but alas and alack!” cried the captain. “I forgot to bring any bullets. What shall I do?”
 
“Ha! Perhaps these will answer!” cried Uncle Wiggily, and the rabbit gentleman dropped down some more moth balls from his airship.
 
“Oh, how kind are you!” cried the soldier captain. Then his soldiers loaded their guns with the white moth ball bullets and shot at the mosquito targets as much as they pleased.
 
Then, a little farther on, Uncle Wiggily saw a bad old lion chasing after a poor little dog. And the lion was going to pull the doggie’s tail, for all I know. Mind, I’m not saying for sure, but maybe.
 
“Ha! This will never do!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “I must stop that lion.”
 
[Pg 52]
 
So he threw the rest of the moth balls out of his airship at the lion. And the balls hit the bad creature on the nose and the lion cried, “Wow! Wow! Wow!” three times, just like that, and then he had to go to the dentist’s to have his nose fixed. So he didn’t chase the doggie any more.
 
“But where are the moth balls?” asked Nurse Jane, when Uncle Wiggily reached home in his airship. And when he told her what he had done with them she said: “Well, you were very kind, of course, but I guess I had better get the moth balls myself next time.”
 
And she did, and she put Uncle Wiggily’s fur coat away in them, and no moths tried to eat it at all. And, in the next story, if the stovepipe takes the refrigerator out to see the circus elephant jump over the back fence, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the dentist.
STORY VIII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE DENTIST

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the old gentleman rabbit, was out taking a sail among the clouds in his airship, made from a clothes basket, some toy circus balloons, a Japanese umbrella and an electric fan, that went whizzie-izzie.
 
“Well, I wonder what will happen to me to-day?” Uncle Wiggily said to himself, as he steered out of the way of a thunderstorm that was having a race with a black cloud. “I suppose I shall have some sort of an adventure.”
 
And, surely enough he did, and I am going to have the pleasure of telling you all about it; that is, if you care to listen, as the telephone girl says.
 
Uncle Wiggily was sailing along, flying over the tops of the houses and the trees in animal land, when, all at once, as he fluttered in his airship above the burrow, or underground house where Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy lived, Mr. Longears heard a voice crying:
 
[Pg 54]
 
“Oh, mamma! But I don’t want to go! I can’t go! I know it will hurt too much!”
 
“Silly boy!” said Mrs. Longtail, the rabbit lady. “Would you rather have the toothache than go to the dentist’s and have him take it away?”
 
“Do you mean take the toothache away or the tooth, mamma?” asked Sammie, curious like.
 
“Both,” answered Mrs. Littletail, with a smile.
 
“Oh, I’m not going!” yelled Sammie.
 
“Ha! There is trouble down there,” said Uncle Wiggily, as he listened to this talk. “I guess perhaps I had better go down and see what I can do.”
 
So down he went in his airship to the home of the Littletail rabbit family, and there, indeed, he found trouble. Sammie had the toothache, from eating too many carrot ice cream cones, and as the tooth was an old one, with a big hole in it, that tooth needed to be pulled.
 
“But I won’t go to the dentist’s!” howled Sammie. Sometimes boy animals, and real boys, too, are that way. It takes girls to go to the dentist. They don’t mind a bit. All they’re afraid of is that their hair ribbons may get bent, or twisted, but they are easily fixed.
 
[Pg 55]
 
“I’ll not go,” said Sammie, and he cried real hard.
 
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Littletail. “Whatever shall I do with you?”
 
“Ha! Perhaps I can help you!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, as he came sailing gently down in his airship. “Sammie, you come for a ride with me, and perhaps everything will be all right. Come in my airship.”
 
“Are we going to the dentist’s?” asked the rabbit boy.
 
“Well, we’ll just stop in and see how he is,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Perhaps he may have a new way of pulling teeth that won’t hurt you the least mite.”
 
Well, at first Sammie did not want to go, but finally he said he would, and into the airship he got with Uncle Wiggily.
 
Up near the clouds they went, sailing along until they came to the hollow stump office of the dentist, who was a bear gentleman, with long claws, just made on purpose for pulling out the aching teeth of the animal people.
 
“Here is my nephew, Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy,” said Uncle Wiggily to the dentist bear. “He has an aching tooth!”
 
“And I want it pulled, but I am afraid it will hurt too much,” cried Sammie.
 
[Pg 56]
 
“Oh, nonsensicalness!” exclaimed the dentist bear. “I can pull teeth without anyone knowing it. Now did you ever tie a string around your tooth, and then fasten a flatiron to the other end of the string, and let the iron drop out of the window?”
 
“Yes,” said Sammie, “I have done that, and every time the flatiron dropped the tooth came out, also. But it hurt!”
 
“Well, maybe a little bit,” said the dentist bear. “But did you ever tie a string to the tooth you wanted pulled, and then tie the other end of the string to the door-knob, and have some one open the door suddenly, when you didn’t know it; ever do that?”
 
“Yes,” said Sammie, “I did. And the tooth came out that time, too.”
 
“Then we shall have to try a new way,” said the dentist bear. “Just let me tie a string to your tooth, and we shall see what happens.”
 
“You won’t pull it; will you?” asked the rabbit boy.
 
“No, I won’t pull it,” answered the dentist bear, as he blinked both his eyes at Uncle Wiggily sort of funny like.
 
So Sammie tied the string to his aching tooth; a good long strong string it was. The dentist[Pg 57] took the other end of the cord and dropped it out of the window.
 
“What are you doing?” asked Sammie.
 
“You’ll see, in a minute,” answered the dentist. “Here, you just look at this picture book for awhile,” and he gave Sammie one with many prettily colored pictures in.
 
Well, when Sammie was looking at the picture book, the dentist took the loose end of the string, that was on the rabbit boy’s tooth, and tied it to Uncle Wiggily’s airship; tied the string I mean, not the tooth.
 
“Now,” whispered the nice bear to the rabbit gentleman, “if you start your airship all of a sudden you will pull on Sammie’s aching tooth, and you’ll have it out in a jiffy, which is very quick indeed.”
 
“I’ll do it!” said Uncle Wiggily. So, while Sammie was sitting there, with the string around his tooth, looking at the pictures and wondering what was going to happen, all of a sudden Uncle Wiggily started the airship. Up it went toward the clouds, pulling on the string, and the next minute Sammie felt a tug, and a pull and a yank and a jerk and, all of a sudden—out came his aching tooth.
 
“Oh!” he cried, jumping up. “What happened?”
 
[Pg 58]
 
“Your toothache is gone,” said the dentist bear gentleman. “Uncle Wiggily pulled it away with his airship.”
 
“Oh, I am so glad!” cried Sammie, when it was all over. “I didn’t know Uncle Wiggily was a dentist, too.”
 
Then his toothache stopped and he rode back home with the rabbit gentleman in the airship, and everybody was happy. Mrs. Littletail, especially, for Sammie had been very troublesome, though he did not mean to be. So this teaches us that an airship is good for pulling teeth, as well as for sailing up in the clouds.
 
And on the next page, if the pussy cat doesn’t fall out of the cherry tree and scratch the covers off the pansy bed, where the puppy dog sleeps, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the grocery cat.
 
STORY IX UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE GROCERY CAT

Uncle Wiggily, the nice old gentleman rabbit, was working away out in the yard fixing his airship. He had been riding around in it a great deal of late, sailing up among the clouds, taking it out in rain storms, and once he even sailed in it across the duck pond, coming right down into the water with it.
 
And in doing all these things one of the handles of the clothes basket, which was part of the airship, had become bent and twisted. And some of the toy circus balloons needed to be blown up with fresh air, and there was a hole in the Japanese umbrella, which formed the top part of the airship, to keep the sun off Uncle Wiggily.
 
“Yes, I must fix up my airship,” said the rabbit gentleman as he worked away, whistling and twinkling his nose at the same time, like a star on a frosty night.
 
And that is very hard to do—to whistle and[Pg 60] twinkle your nose at the same time. If you do not believe me just try it yourself and see.
 
“Have you any more sofa cushions I could take for my airship, Nurse Jane?” asked Uncle Wiggily, going into the house where the muskrat lady housekeeper was boiling some carrots to make a lemon pie.
 
“Sofa cushions?” Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy cried. “What in the world do you want of more sofa cushions?”
 
“To make another seat in the clothes basket of my airship,” answered the rabbit gentleman. “You see, I have room for two persons in it, and perhaps even three more of my animal friends, if we squeezed up a bit, but I need more sofa cushions to make a soft place for my company to land on in case we fall.”
 
“Well, I guess we have a few cushions left,” said the muskrat lady. “But, please, don’t lose them.”
 
Uncle Wiggily said he wouldn’t and soon he had his airship all fixed up with two nicely cushioned seats in it. Then he went back in the house to get a turnip cookie, with cocoanut sprinkled on the bottom, and he asked of Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy, most politely:
 
“Won’t you come and take a ride in my airship, Nurse Jane?”
 
[Pg 61]
 
“Oh, my goodness me, sakes alive and some fried soap bubbles!” cried the muskrat lady, surprised like. “No, indeed, thank you! I should be dreadfully afraid.”
 
“There is no danger at all,” Uncle Wiggily said, but Nurse Jane would not come out in the airship with him, and the rabbit gentleman had to go sailing all alone by himself.
 
Up into the air he soared, looking down on the tree tops, and he wished he had some one with him, for he was lonesome, Uncle Wiggily was. But Charlie and Arabella Chick, the hen lady’s children, were at school, and so were Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbits, and Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels. In fact Bully and Bawly No-Tail, the frog boys, and all the animal children were at school.
 
“I guess I can find no one to ride with me to-day,” sadly said Uncle Wiggily, after he had called on Grandfather Goosey Gander and found that the old goose gentleman had gone fishing after snails. Dr. Possum, on whom the old rabbit gentleman also called, was busy looking after the ill animals, so of course Dr. Possum could not go.
 
Well, Uncle Wiggily was getting more and more lonesome, and he was thinking of going[Pg 62] back home, when, all of a sudden, down on the ground below him he heard some one saying:
 
“Oh, dear! Isn’t it too bad! Oh, such bad luck! and they want these things for the party, too! Oh, sorrow! Oh, unhappiness! Oh, woe is me!”
 
“My, some one must be having a whole bushel of trouble, and then some more,” said Uncle Wiggily, sort of surprised like. “I must see what this is.”
 
He made his airship go slowly down toward the ground, and then the rabbit gentleman saw the delivery boy grocery cat standing near an old stump, and looking down at a broken basket, that had been filled with things from the store. But the things were all spilled now.
 
“Ha! What is the matter, Tom?” asked Uncle Wiggily of the grocery cat. You see the cat’s name was Tom, and he worked at delivering groceries from the grocery store.
 
“Oh, I have such a lot of trouble,” said Tom. “As I was going along with the groceries just now, my basket handle broke, one of the sides slipped out, and the groceries spilled all over.”
 
“That is too bad,” said Uncle Wiggily kindly, as he made his airship go all the way down to the ground.
 
“And the worst of it is,” went on Tom, the[Pg 63] grocery cat, “that the basket is so broken that I can’t use it again. I have no other and Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady, is in a hurry for these things. She wants them for a party she is getting up for Lulu, Alice and Jimmie. Oh, isn’t it too bad!”
 
“Yes, but it might be worse,” said Uncle Wiggily, cheerfully. “Nothing is so bad but what it could be worse.”
 
“I don’t see how,” spoke Tom, the grocery cat. “I can’t deliver these things, and Mrs. Wibblewobble will be so disappointed, and so will Lulu and Alice and Jimmie.”
 
“Oh, it might easily be worse,” laughed Uncle Wiggily, as he twinkled his nose twice and once more. “I might not have come along in my airship to help you. But here I am, and I have just put a new cushioned seat in the clothes basket, on purpose to give some one a ride.
 
“Now you get right in with me, and pile in the groceries. Never mind the broken basket. I’ll take you to Mrs. Wibblewobble’s house as fast as anything, and then you can deliver the groceries.”
 
“Oh, how kind you are!” cried Tom. In a second he had his groceries packed in Uncle Wiggily’s clothes basket airship. Then he and the old rabbit gentleman took their seats, up[Pg 64] went the airship, around went the electric fan and pretty soon they were over the home of Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady.
 
“Groceries!” cried Tom the cat, just as if he were at the back door, and when Uncle Wiggily lowered his airship, the things for the party were put on the back stoop. And wasn’t the duck lady surprised to see the groceries from the store come in an airship? Well, I guess she was! But she was delighted, too!
 
Then Tom, the grocery cat, thanked Uncle Wiggily again for helping him, and the rabbit gentleman took Tom back to the store, where he got a new basket, and everybody was happy.
 
And on the next page, if our piano doesn’t go out to a phonograph party and forget to come home to breakfast, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the smoky chimney.
 
STORY X UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE SMOKY CHIMNEY

Once upon a time there was a Flump, who lived in animal land, not far from where Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, had his hollow stump bungalow with nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady. This Flump lived in a house all by herhimself, and heshe was not a very pleasant sort of an animal.
 
You see, a Flump is sometimes a he and sometimes a she, so I have to mix up the words. And another thing—a Flump is always sad and cross and unhappy, and tries to make others unhappy, too. So, whatever you are, please, please, please never be a Flump.
 
A Flump can never see anything good in anything or anybody. Gracious, if there were many Flumps in this world it would be a dreadful place in which to live.
 
For instance, a Flump doesn’t like to see children playing tag and running about, and a Flump doesn’t like to hear children laugh and shout. If the Flumps had their way it would[Pg 66] always be dark and bedtime, and everybody would go in their houses and shut themselves up and be gloomy and sad. There never would be any Christmas or Fourth of July, and school would always be in, with no recess, and there wouldn’t be any ice cream cones, or merry-go-rounds, or peanuts, or toy balloons, or circus-lemonade, or anything like that.
 
However, thank goodness, there aren’t many Flumps in the world. But, I am sorry to say, one lived near Uncle Wiggily. And one day when the old gentleman rabbit was sailing around in his airship he happened to land on the ground close by the house of this Flump.
 
Some of the wind came out of the toy circus balloons that Uncle Wiggily had fastened on his clothes basket airship, and the rabbit gentleman came down to blow more air in them.
 
The Flump saw him, and coming out of herhis house, with a sad, gloomy face, the Flump said, most dolefully and sorrowfully:
 
“Oh, why do you waste your time riding around in your airship, Mr. Longears? Why do you waste your time?”
 
“I do not waste my time,” said the rabbit gentleman cheerfully. “I ride about, it is true, but whenever I see any one in trouble I help them if I can.”
 
[Pg 67]
 
“Ah, yes, but how much better,” said the Flump, “how much better it would be if you would sell your airship and put the money away where you would always have it. Then you could stay in the house all day and be sad, as I am. Oh, I love to be sad.”
 
“Yes,” said Uncle Wiggily, “I guess you do! You look it! But I do not like to be sad. I like to be happy and make others happy if I can.”
 
“Happy!” cried the Flump. “There is no such thing as happiness! All is sad and gloom! See, it is getting dark. It will soon be night, and I’ll be glad, for then every one will have to go to bed.”
 
“No, it is not getting night,” said Uncle Wiggily; “that is only the sun going under a cloud. It will soon come out shining again.” And, surely enough it did, but the Flump was not happy.
 
“I am going in the house and take some bitter medicine,” said the Flump, sadly like.
 
“Well, I hope it will do you good,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, cheerfully and politely.
 
So the Flump went in herhis gloomy house, to take hisher bitter sour medicine, and Uncle Wiggily fixed his airship. Pretty soon, just as he was about to sail up toward the blue sky, where[Pg 68] the sun was shining, and the birds were singing, the Flump came running out, crying:
 
“Oh, woe is me! Oh, unhappiness! I knew something would happen! My house is on fire!”
 
Uncle Wiggily looked, and, surely enough, a lot of smoke was pouring out of the doors and windows of the Flump animal’s house. Thicker and thicker grew the smoke.
 
“Yes, there must be a fire!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “But don’t worry! I’ll call out the water bug fire department, and we’ll soon make everything right. Don’t worry!”
 
“Oh, but I just love to worry!” cried the Flump. “I am glad I have something about which to worry! Oh, unhappiness!”
 
But Uncle Wiggily had no time to worry. Into his airship he jumped, and off he flew to get the fire department.
 
He brought back the brave water bugs with their buckets of water, but when they had rushed in the Flump’s house they came out, saying, as they wiped the smoke out of their eyes:
 
“There is no fire there!”
 
“No fire?” cried Uncle Wiggily. “But look at the smoke.”
 
“The chimney is stopped up,” said the head water bug. “There is something in the chimney, and when the Flump built a fire all the smoke[Pg 69] came out into the room, instead of going up the flue.”
 
“Oh, I knew something was the matter,” sobbed the Flump. “And I am glad of it. Now I can be more unhappy than ever.”
 
“Oh, fie!” cried Uncle Wiggily, twinkling his nose. “It is wrong to be sad and unhappy! Besides, I can soon make you happy.”
 
“How can I be glad when my chimney smokes?” asked the Flump. “It is all stopped up.”
 
“Well, perhaps we can unstop it,” said the rabbit gentleman. “We will try.”
 
The water bugs tried to get whatever it was out of the chimney, but they could not. Neither could a policeman dog, who came in, and barked up the fireplace as hard as he could bark. Then Uncle Wiggily said:
 
“I will now use my airship. I’ll go up above the chimney and poke a long pole down the chimney hole.” He did this, and a loose brick that had fallen down the flue, stopping it up, was poked out by the rabbit gentleman, and then the chimney did not smoke any more. A fire could now be built in the stove.
 
“Be happy now, Flump!” cried Uncle Wiggily, cheerfully. And all the water bugs cried:
 
“Yes, be happy!”
 
[Pg 70]
 
And then, all of a sudden, when the Flump saw how kind every one was to himher, and how anxious every one was for herhim to be glad, the Flump just turned up the corners of hisher mouth—instead of turning them down—and heshe took off the dark spectacles shehe wore, and put on a pair with beautiful rose-colored glasses, so that all the world looked cheerful, and the Flump said:
 
“Yes, I will be glad! I’m sorry I was ever sad!”
 
“Oh, don’t even be sorry that you were once sad,” cried Uncle Wiggily, joyfully; “just be glad you are glad, and don’t ever remember you were sad!”
 
“I’ll always be glad now,” went on the Flump, who turned out to be a nice old lady Grandmother, after all her troubles were over. Then she made up a fire in the stove, the chimney didn’t smoke any more and the Flump made a big chocolate cake and gave every one some. And ever after that the Flump was named Scrump, instead of Flump. For Scrump is short for scrumptious, which means just lovely, you know. And Uncle Wiggily took Scrump for a ride in the airship, and they picked flowers up in cloudland.
 
[Pg 71]
 
And in the next story, if robin redbreast doesn’t take our milk bottle for his bath tub and go picking strawberries off the rose bush, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the church bell.
STORY XI UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE CHURCH BELL

“Here is a package for you, Mr. Longears,” said Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as she entered the dining-room, of the hollow stump bungalow, where the rabbit gentleman was eating his breakfast right after supper—the next day, of course.
 
“A package for me—how nice!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “Let me see—what day is it?”
 
“I don’t see that it makes any difference,” spoke Nurse Jane. “A package is a package any day.”
 
“Ah, yes, very true,” admitted Uncle Wiggily. “But a package on April Fools’ day is quite different from one on Christmas.”
 
“So it is,” said the muskrat lady with a laugh. “But as it happens, this is not April Fools’ day.”
 
“No, it is not,” admitted Uncle Wiggily, “and in that case I will open the package. Who brought it?”
 
“Billie Bushytail, the squirrel boy, on his way[Pg 73] to school left it for you,” answered Nurse Jane.
 
“And from whom did it come?” Uncle Wiggily wanted to know.
 
“You had better open it and see,” suggested Nurse Jane.
 
Uncle Wiggily did so, and what do you s’pose he found? Why in the package was a lovely chocolate cake, with cocoanut on top, and a yellow carrot in the middle. And there was a little card on which was written:
 
“From the Scrump, who used to be a Flump, to Dear Uncle Wiggily.”
 
“Ha!” exclaimed the old gentleman rabbit. “This is very nice. I am glad I helped change the Flump into a Scrump.”
 
I told you that story on the page before this, you remember. The Flump was a curious, sad sort of a mixed-up animal, but when Uncle Wiggily fixed her smoky chimney, the Flump turned into a Scrump, which is short for Scrumptious, and scrumptious means lovely.
 
“My! that is good chocolate cake,” said the gentleman rabbit, passing Nurse Jane a large slice. “Just give it away to the animal children when they come home from school.”
 
“That’s just like you!” cried the muskrat lady. “Giving away everything you get! Why don’t you eat it yourself?”
 
[Pg 74]
 
“I had rather see others eat it,” replied Uncle Wiggily. And I might say that if ever you feel yourself turning into a Flump, just start giving things away, or making others happy, and you’ll become a Scrump right away. And it’s much nicer to be a Scrump than a Flump.
 
“Where are you going?” asked Nurse Jane, as Uncle Wiggily got up from the table.
 
“Out for a ride in my airship,” replied the rabbit gentleman. “It is a lovely day, and I might find some in trouble whom I could help. Yes, I shall go for a little ride.”
 
“Well, don’t fall,” begged Nurse Jane, and Uncle Wiggily promised that he would not. Soon he was soaring and flying up near the clouds in his airship, that was made from a clothes basket, some circus balloons, a Japanese umbrella and an electric fan.
 
Pretty soon, in a little while, not so very long, Uncle Wiggily heard, down on the earth, some one saying most sadly:
 
“Oh, dear! Now I am in trouble!”
 
“My! I wonder if that’s Tom, the grocery cat, who has another broken basket?” said Uncle Wiggily to himself. “If it is I must help him.”
 
He looked down and found that, right under him, was a big church with a steeple and in front of the church was the sexton, or janitor, a very[Pg 75] nice man, indeed, if you will kindly allow me to say so.
 
“Oh, dear! Such trouble!” cried the sexton man, sadly.
 
“What is the trouble?” asked Uncle Wiggily kindly, as he lowered his airship. “Perhaps I can help you.”
 
“I’m afraid not,” answered the janitor. “You see, the rope by which I pull the church bell is broken. To-morrow is Sunday and I have not time to mend the rope. I can’t ring the bell, and unless I do make it jingle ding-dong, the people will not hear it and will not come to church.”
 
“Ha! That is too bad!” agreed Uncle Wiggily. “For going to church does every one good. But won’t they come even if the bell doesn’t ring?”
 
“I am afraid not,” said the sexton man. “You see, the bell has been rung every Sunday for years and years and years. The people have become used to it. They don’t even look at their clocks, but when they hear the bell go ‘ding-dong!’ they say: ‘Ah! it is time to go to church.’ But now, alas, the rope is broken and I will not be able to ring the Sunday bell to-morrow.”
 
“Don’t worry,” said Uncle Wiggily, with a laugh. “And don’t be gloomy like a Flump,[Pg 76] whatever happens. Perhaps I may be able to help you.”
 
But the sexton man did not think so, and he was quite sad. He tried to fix the bell rope, but he could not, and it looked as though the bell would not ring for Sunday church.
 
But what did Uncle Wiggily do? Listen, as the telephone girl says, and I will tell you. Sunday morning, bright and early, the rabbit gentleman took a lot of stones in the clothes basket and he went sailing up in his airship.
 
Right up over the church spire he sailed, and he hovered over the steeple and the bell, and, when it was time for church, the rabbit gentleman threw stones at the bell. And, as he was a good shot, he hit it every time.
 
“Crack!” went a stone on the bell, and the bell went “Ding-dong! Ding-dong!” slowly and solemn-like. More stones did Uncle Wiggily throw from his airship, and every time the rabbit gentleman hit it the bell rang just as well as though the sexton had pulled the rope.
 
“Ha!” cried all the people. “There goes the bell! It is time for church!”
 
So they went, and were not late, but they were much surprised when they saw Uncle Wiggily in his airship, throwing stones at the bell to ring it.
 
[Pg 77]
 
And when all the people were in their seats, Uncle Wiggily didn’t have to ring the bell any more. He came down out of his airship and went to church himself, and everybody was happy, and the sexton was most especially thankful to the rabbit gentleman.
 
So that’s all now, if you please, but next, if my typewriter doesn’t go in swimming and get its hair ribbon all wet, so it’s as crinkly as a corkscrew, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the doll’s house.
STORY XII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE DOLL HOUSE

“Oh, I’m so happy! So happy,” sang Susie Littletail, the rabbit girl, as she hopped on her way home from school one afternoon.
 
“Why are you so happy?” asked Lulu Wibblewobble, the duck girl, as she picked up a stone in her webbed foot and tossed it into the pond. I mean she tossed the stone—not her foot. Lulu could throw a stone almost as good as a boy.
 
“Why, I am happy because my papa is going to give me a doll house for my birthday, which is to-morrow,” went on Susie. “Oh, it is the loveliest doll house! I saw it in a toy-store window, and papa is going to get it for me.”
 
“I wish I had a doll house,” spoke Lulu, sadly like.
 
“I’ll let you play with mine,” Susie answered. “It is a large one, with room for two dolls, anyhow.”
 
“Oh, thank you, so much!” exclaimed Lulu,[Pg 79] and then she and Susie hurried on, stopping only to pick a few wild flowers that grew by the path which turned and twisted through the woods.
 
“When am I going to get my doll house, papa?” asked Susie at the supper table that evening.
 
“I will have it for you when I come home to-morrow night,” promised the rabbit gentleman. “I am having some of the rooms papered for you.”
 
“Oh, how lovely!” cried Susie, clapping her paws.
 
The lady mouse teacher at the hollow stump school, where the little rabbit girl and all the other animal children attended, allowed Susie to come home early on her birthday, and Susie ran all the way.
 
“I’m so anxious to see my doll house!” cried Susie.
 
But, here comes the sad part of the story. I’ll make it as short as I can, though.
 
When Susie reached her house she saw her papa sitting out on the front porch. He was all scratched up, and one of his ears was bent over backward, and his white fur was all dirt, and he looked very sad.
 
“Oh, papa!” cried Susie. “What has happened?”
 
[Pg 80]
 
“Oh, alas! Likewise sorrowfulness! Oh, woe is me!” said Mr. Littletail, sadly like.
 
“Oh, tell me, please!” begged Susie, clasping her paws.
 
“I have lost your birthday doll house, Susie,” said her papa. “I was bringing it home through the greenwood forest, and when I crossed the bridge over the deep, dark valley, the bridge broke, and I nearly fell with it. I lost hold of the doll house, and down it went into the deep, dark valley.”
 
“Oh, how sad!” cried Susie.
 
“I tried to save the doll house from falling,” went on Mr. Littletail, “but I could not. I slipped and stumbled myself, when the bridge gave way; and I am scratched up. But I would not mind that if I could have saved your doll house for you.”
 
“Oh, papa dear! I am so sorry you are hurt!” sobbed Susie. “I don’t mind about the doll house—that is, not much,” she said, and she put her paws around her papa’s neck and kissed him.
 
But, all the same, Susie did mind dreadfully about her lost play-toy. And Mr. Littletail told over and over again how the bridge across the deep, dark valley, (which bridge had been partly washed away by the rain) had snapped[Pg 81] and cracked as he was hurrying over it with the doll house.
 
“But I have a birthday cake for you, with ten carrot candles on,” said Mrs. Littletail, and Susie felt a little happy over that. But, most of all, she wanted her doll house.
 
“Maybe I can get it for you,” said Susie’s brother Sammie, kindly, when he heard about the trouble. “Come, we will go to the deep, dark valley and see.”
 
So the rabbit children went to the greenwood forest, but they could not even see the bottom of the valley, or big hole in the ground, between the high rocky walls. And much less could they spy the doll house.
 
“It is gone forever,” said Susie, sadly.
 
“Yes, I am afraid I could not get down there and bring the doll house up for you,” spoke Sammie. For the rocky sides of the deep, dark valley were very steep, like the roof of a house, and if Sammie went into the deep place he could hardly ever get out again.
 
“Oh, my lovely birthday doll house, that I’ll never see, or have!” sobbed Susie, as she looked down into the dark hole where her play-toy was, but where it could not be reached.
 
“Well, maybe papa will get you another,” said Sammie, kindly.
 
[Pg 82]
 
“Oh, I’m afraid not! Oh, dear! How sad!” cried Susie, as she and her rabbit brother started for home.
 
“Ha! What is all this about? What seems to be the trouble?” suddenly asked a voice, up in the air, and, looking over their heads, Sammie and Susie saw Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, in his airship. The airship, as I have told you, was made from a clothes basket, with circus balloons to raise it up in the air. Uncle Wiggily sat on sofa cushions in the basket. “What is the trouble?” he asked.
 
“Oh, papa accidentally dropped my toy doll house down in the deep, dark valley!” said Susie. “We can never get it out.”
 
“Oh, yes we can!” cried Uncle Wiggily in his jolly voice. “I can lower my airship down into the valley, and I will, and I’ll get your doll house, Susie! You just watch me!”
 
“But it’s so dark you can’t see it,” spoke Sammie.
 
“I’ll light a Christmas tree candle,” said Uncle Wiggily, and so he did. Down into the deep, dark valley he steered his airship, and by the light of the candle he saw the doll house. It had fallen on a big pile of leaves, and wasn’t hurt a mite. Uncle Wiggily carefully lifted the play-toy into his airship.
 
[Pg 83]
 
“Here you are, Susie!” cried Uncle Wiggily, as he floated up out of the valley, and gave the little rabbit girl her birthday doll house. “I told you I’d get it back for you!”
 
“Oh, you dear Uncle Wiggily!” cried Susie, as she hugged and kissed him. Then she and Sammie took the doll house home, and Susie and Lulu Wibblewobble, the duck girl, had much fun playing with it, and were very happy.
 
And Uncle Wiggily went on sailing in his airship, and he had another adventure. I’ll tell you about it on the page after this, when, in case the ink bottle doesn’t go to sleep on the white bed spread, and make a mark like an ice cream cone, the story will be about Uncle Wiggily and the bird seed.
 
STORY XIII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE BIRD SEED

“Uncle Wiggily, are you going any place special this morning?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the housekeeper muskrat lady, as she came out in the yard where the rabbit gentleman was giving his airship a drink of molasses, so it would not sail too fast.
 
“Anywhere special?” repeated Uncle Wiggily, sort of thoughtful like; “why, no, Nurse Jane, to tell you the truth, I am merely going for a little sort of vacation sail around the clouds, and perhaps I may find an adventure. Did you want me to do anything for you, Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy?”
 
“Why, yes, if you will be so kind,” replied the muskrat lady, as she tied her tail in a double bow knot, so that it would not drag on the floor when she was sweeping. “I wish you would stop at the drug store, Uncle Wiggily, and get me some bird seed. My pet cat is hungry and I want to feed it.”
 
“Very well, I will get the bird seed for you,” spoke the rabbit gentleman politely, “though I never before heard of feeding it to a cat; never!” he said, slowly wagging his ears to and fro.
 
“Well, I have a reason for it,” said Nurse Jane. “You see, my cat used to catch and eat the dear little birds, and that made me feel sad. So I thought perhaps if I could teach my cat to eat the bird seed, instead of the birds, it would be better. And so I did. And now, Muffins, my black cat, would rather have bird seed to eat any day than the dear birds that sing so sweetly.”
 
“A fine idea!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I wish more cats ate bird seed. I will get you a large package at the drug store.”
 
So off Uncle Wiggily started in his airship, the electric fan at the back, by which it was pushed along through the clouds, going around whizzie-izzie, as fast as an egg beater.
 
“Oh, Uncle Wiggily, where are you going?” asked Billie Bushytail, the boy squirrel, in the top of a tall tree as the rabbit gentleman sailed over it in his airship. “Please give me a ride!” begged Billie.
 
“I will give you a ride as far as your school; you and your brother Johnnie,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “Then I must sail on to the drug store to get the bird seed for Nurse Jane.”
 
[Pg 86]
 
“Oh! Is she going to plant the bird seed in the garden and raise canary birds?” asked Johnnie, as he scrambled up to the top of the tree to hop in the airship, and get a ride.
 
“No, Nurse Jane is going to feed it to her cat, which eats bird seed instead of birds,” replied the rabbit gentleman, as he called “Whoa!” to his airship, and made it stand still long enough for Billie and Johnnie to hop in from a tree branch.
 
“I wish she would teach cats to eat squirrel seed instead of squirrels,” spoke Johnnie. “Once a cat ate up a little red squirrel, who was our cousin.”
 
“Ah! That was too bad!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I will see if the drug store man has any squirrel seed.”
 
Off he started in the airship again, taking Billie and Johnnie to the hollow stump school. Near there Uncle Wiggily stopped his ship close to the top of another tall tree, and into that the squirrel boys leaped, scrambling down to the ground, just in time for their lessons.
 
Well, the rabbit gentleman reached the drug store all right, and bought the bird seed for Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy.
 
“And now, have you any squirrel seed?” asked Uncle Wiggily, as he told why he wanted it.
 
[Pg 87]
 
“I have only nuts for squirrels to eat,” said the elephant gentleman who kept the drug store. “You might call that squirrel seed.”
 
“Well, I’ll take some,” said Uncle Wiggily, “and if we can not teach cats to eat the nuts, instead of the dear little squirrels, I can give the nuts to Billie and Johnnie. They’ll eat them, anyhow.”
 
So, with the bird seed and the nuts, the rabbit gentleman set off once more in his airship. He had not sailed very far before he felt himself growing sleepy.
 
“Ha! Ho! Hum!” cried Uncle Wiggily, with a yawn. “I think I will sail down to the ground, and take a nap. It would not be safe to go sailing about up in the air while asleep. I might run into a thunder storm and break something.”
 
So he guided his airship down to earth, and in a nice shady place in the woods, the rabbit gentleman tied his clothes basket to a tree, so it would not sail up and away when he was asleep, and then he began to dream.
 
After a while he awakened, feeling much better, and when he had stretched his ears and twinkled his nose, he said:
 
“Well, now, I guess I’ll sail home again.”
 
But, when he loosed the ropes that held his airship[Pg 88] fast, it would not rise up, as it always had done before.
 
“Why, what in the world can be the matter?” asked Uncle Wiggily, and then he looked at the bunch of toy circus balloons that used to raise his airship off the earth. And every balloon was as flat as a pancake! All the hot air had gone out of them.
 
“Ha! No wonder I could not rise!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I must blow up my balloons!”
 
But, when he tried, he found the balloons so full of holes that no air would stay in them. A bad lot of mosquitoes had come along while Uncle Wiggily slept, had punctured holes in the rubber balloons, let out the air, and they were all spoiled.
 
“Oh, dear!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “What shall I do? I never can sail home in my airship!” Then he happened to think of something. “I have it!” he cried. “I will scatter some bird seed on the ground. A lot of birds will see it and come to eat it. And I will ask them all to take hold of my airship in their bills at once, and raise me up by fluttering their wings. Then they can fly home with me and my airship.”
 
So Uncle Wiggily did this. He scattered some of the bird seed on the ground, and Dickie Chip-Chip, the sparrow boy, and some robins and[Pg 89] blue birds—more than a thousand of them—came to eat the seeds. And when the birds had eaten them Uncle Wiggily asked:
 
“Will you please fly home with me and my airship, for my lifting balloons are all full of holes?”
 
“Indeed we will, and that right gladly!” answered the birds, politely. So they lifted Uncle Wiggily and his airship up in their bills and with their fluttering wings bore him safely home, and there was bird seed enough left for Nurse Jane’s cat.
 
But the cat would not eat the nuts, so Johnnie and Billie Bushytail had them to crack. And that’s all to this story.
 
However, if the rooster in our back yard doesn’t crow so loudly that he makes the alarm clock jump off the mantel, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the baby rabbit.
STORY XIV UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE BABY RABBIT

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” cried Susie, the little rabbit girl, one afternoon, as she came over to Mr. Longears’ hollow stump bungalow. “I wonder if you can guess what came to our burrow in the night?”
 
“Let me see,” said Uncle Wiggily, slow and thoughtful like; “was it a mouse?”
 
“Nope!” cried Susie, laughing and clapping her paws.
 
“Was it a thunder storm?” asked the rabbit gentleman, sort of puzzled like.
 
“Nope! I’ll give you one more guess, and then I’ll tell you,” spoke Susie, laughing more than ever.
 
“Was it—er—let me see—you didn’t have a party come to your house last night, did you, Susie?”
 
“No! Oh, I knew you couldn’t guess! It was a baby rabbit. Sammie and I have a little baby brother. He came last night.
 
[Pg 91]
 
“Oh, how fine!” cried Uncle Wiggily, tying his ears up in a hard knot and then untying them again. “I must go right over and see it. Come on, Susie, we’ll go in my airship.”
 
“Don’t let Susie fall out!” cried Nurse Jane, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as the old gentleman rabbit, followed by Susie, went out to the henhouse, where he kept his clothes basket airship.
 
“I won’t!” promised Uncle Wiggily, and then he and Susie sailed off, up near the clouds, over the fields and woods, to the burrow where Mrs. Littletail, Susie’s mamma, lived.
 
“Where is that baby rabbit?” cried Uncle Wiggily, as he lowered his airship to the ground. “I must see him.”
 
“Here he is,” said Mrs. Littletail, proudly, bringing out the new little baby rabbit. “But be careful not to squeeze him too hard, as he is very soft and tender.”
 
“Oh, I’ll be careful!” said Uncle Wiggily with a laugh.
 
Then he took the baby rabbit and toddled him up and down on his knee, and said “Ootsie-Cootsie!” and “Tummy-tummy!” and “petsie-etsie!” You know the way old gentleman always talk to babies, whether they are animals or not.
 
[Pg 92]
 
“Isn’t he just too sweet!” cried Susie, as she stood peeping lovingly at her new baby brother. “And doesn’t he look just like Sammie?”
 
“Hu! Do I look like that?” asked Sammie, standing off to one side, with his paws in his pockets.
 
“You did when you were little,” said his mamma, smiling.
 
“Ha! Well, I don’t now,” spoke Sammie sort of thankful like. “Come on, Susie, I’m going to school—the last bell has almost rung.”
 
“Wait until I give baby a kiss,” said Susie, and, when she had done so, she hurried to school with Sammie.
 
Uncle Wiggily stayed with Mrs. Littletail for some time, and he jiggled and joggled the baby rabbit up and down on his knee, and talked baby talk to it, and had just a lovely time as all old gentleman rabbits do at such times.
 
After a while Mrs. Littletail said:
 
“Oh, Uncle Wiggily, I have to go to the store to get a rattle box for baby rabbit, to amuse him when he cries! I wonder if you would stay here and take care of him until I come back!”
 
“Of course I would, and I’d be glad to—real proud and happy to do so!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Won’t I, baby rabbit? Ootsie-cootsie ’unnin’-cunnin’!”
 
[Pg 93]
 
“Goo!” said the baby rabbit. I guess that meant “yes” in baby rabbit talk.
 
So Mrs. Littletail went to the store for a rattle box for her new bunny baby, and then Uncle Wiggily jiggled and joggled the little chap up and down on his knee some more.
 
“Goo-goo!” said baby rabbit, as cute as anything.
 
“Oh, you’re just too lovely!” cried Uncle Wiggily, exactly as Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy might have done.
 
But, all of a sudden, baby rabbit began to cry.
 
“Oh, my!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily sort of disappointed like. “Hold on if you please! Don’t do that! Stop it!”
 
But the more he talked the more the baby rabbit sobbed.
 
“Wah! Wah! Wah!” cried the small chap. “Wah-h-h-h-h-h-h!”
 
“Oh, my!” shouted Uncle Wiggily. “I guess I must walk up and down with you!” and he did, as fast as anything, but the baby rabbit only cried the harder.
 
“Ha! Maybe you want me to stand on my head for you!” said Uncle Wiggily. So he put the baby in its crib and stood on his head, in a corner, wiggling his feet in the air. But the baby rabbit still cried:
 
[Pg 94]
 
“Wah! Wah! Wah!”
 
“Oh, come now, be nice!” begged Uncle Wiggily, looking around for something with which to amuse the rabbit baby. “I guess you want your rattle box. I wish Mrs. Littletail would hurry back.”
 
“Wah! Wah! Wah!” cried baby rabbit.
 
“I know what I’ll do!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll take you in my airship to Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy. She’ll know what to do.”
 
So, bundling the baby rabbit up in its warm blankets, the old gentleman rabbit hurried out to his airship, which he had left standing in the yard. It had been all fixed since the mosquitoes had bitten holes in the balloons, and was better than ever.
 
“Now we’re all right!” Uncle Wiggily cried, as he started off through the air. “Nurse Jane will soon fix you, little fellow!”
 
“Why, you shouldn’t have brought a new, little baby rabbit out in your airship,” said the muskrat lady, when she saw what Uncle Wiggily had done. “It might take cold.”
 
“Wah! Wah! Wah!” howled the baby rabbit.
 
“Listen to that! I couldn’t make it stop crying,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I did everything,[Pg 95] even to making funny faces at it. What do you do in a case like this?”
 
“Silly old Uncle Wiggily!” laughed Nurse Jane. “I guess this little fellow is hungry!” And, surely enough, when she gave baby rabbit some warm milk and sugar from a bottle, the little chap stopped crying at once and went to sleep.
 
“Well, I do declare!” cried Uncle Wiggily, in surprise. “It is so easy when you know how!” And then, while the baby rabbit slept, Uncle Wiggily took it home in his airship, and just in time, too, for Mrs. Littletail had come back with the rattle box, and she was wondering where in the world her baby was. Then she thanked Uncle Wiggily, and put the baby rabbit in its crib, and that is the end of this story.
 
But in the next story, if the door knob doesn’t turn a somersault over the pepper caster and slide off the table, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the popgun.
STORY XV UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE POPGUN

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, was out in the yard back of his house, blowing hot air in the toy circus balloons of his airship. The balloons would then lift the airship up in the air, and Uncle Wiggily could sail around near the clouds, like a bird.
 
“Aren’t you afraid the airship will some day go up without you in it?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, who kept house for the rabbit gentleman.
 
“Oh, no, for I always tie my airship fast to the fence, or a tree, or something like that, until I am ready to get in it!” he answered.
 
This time Uncle Wiggily tied his airship, with a clothesline, to the grape arbor, and he went on getting the red, green, blue and yellow balloons more and more full of hot air. The rabbit gentleman blew the hot air in with a putty blower.
 
Soon the airship was tugging and tugging[Pg 97] away at the clothesline, wanting to sail up in the air, and take the old gentleman rabbit with it for a sail in the clothes basket, which was filled with soft cushions. These were taken along so, in case Uncle Wiggily fell, he would not be bounced too hard.
 
But the airship could not go up until the rabbit gentleman loosed the rope that held it fast.
 
“And that I’ll do as soon as I go in and wash my paws and get a carrot sandwich,” the rabbit gentleman said, when he had finished fixing the balloons. “Then I’ll go off and see if I can find an adventure.”
 
An adventure, you know, is something that happens to you, like being late for school, and getting kept in. But I hope you have no such unpleasant adventure as that. I’d rather you had a nice one, like finding an ice cream cone rolling up hill.
 
Well, Uncle Wiggily went into the house to wash his paws. He soaped them nicely and also his face, but, when he went to dry them, he could not find the towel.
 
“Oh, Nurse Jane!” he cried. “Come quickly and get me a towel! There’s some soap in my eyes!”
 
“Oh, my goodness me sakes alive and some apple pudding!” cried Nurse Jane. Then she[Pg 98] ran in to get a towel for Uncle Wiggily, leaving the airship in the yard all alone.
 
And now something is going to happen.
 
Along came Jocko Kinkytail, the little monkey boy, on his way to school. Jocko was going to be late, too. He almost always was late, and the reason was that he stopped too often along the road to play and to look at the things he saw.
 
“Oh, my goodness!” cried Jocko, when he saw Uncle Wiggily’s airship in the yard, all ready to sail. “I must look at that!”
 
Over the fence he scrambled, and he began looking at the airship, made of a clothes basket, some toy balloons, a Japanese umbrella and an electric fan.
 
“Say! This is fine!” cried Jocko. “I wonder what keeps it from going up when no one is in it?” Then he noticed the clothesline rope holding it down, and he said, “Ah, I see!”
 
Now Jocko was very curious, and when the monkey chap saw a knot tied in the holdingdown rope he at once tried to loosen it. And with his cunning little fingers Jocko did loosen the knot.
 
And then——
 
Up shot the airship into the air, nearly knocking the monkey boy down, so suddenly did it leave the earth.
 
[Pg 99]
 
“Oh, my!” cried Jocko.
 
“Oh, now you have done it!” exclaimed Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, as she came running out of the house, after having gotten Uncle Wiggily a towel to wipe the soap out of his eyes.
 
“What has happened?” asked the rabbit gentleman himself, as he came hopping out, with his red white and blue striped barber pole crutch that Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy had gnawed for him out of a cornstalk.
 
“I am very sorry,” spoke Jocko politely, “but your airship has run away.”
 
“Run away?” cried Uncle Wiggily.
 
“Yes, run away. I loosened the knot in the rope, and up it went—the airship went up, I mean—not the rope,” said Jocko politely.
 
“Yes, so I see,” remarked Uncle Wiggily, looking upward. And there his airship was floating high above the trees, and no one was in it, except the sofa cushions, to bring it down again, and they could not do it.
 
“I am very sorry,” said Jocko. “I will see if I can’t get it down for you.” So he climbed the tallest tree there was, but still the airship was far above his reach.
 
“You can never get it!” cried Nurse Jane sadly.
 
“Perhaps I can help you,” spoke an elephant[Pg 100] gentleman coming along just then. “I used to be a cowboy in a Wild West show, and perhaps I can throw my rope lasso up high enough to get it around the airship and pull it down.”
 
So he threw his rope lasso with his trunk, but the airship was still too high for him to reach.
 
“You will have to get an eagle bird to fly up and bring it down,” said Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy.
 
“Ha! No! I have a better plan than that!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Run over to Sammie Littletail’s house and get his popgun,” said the rabbit gentleman to the monkey boy. “I will put some beans in the popgun, shoot them at the balloons, burst holes in them to let out the hot air, and down my airship will come of itself.”
 
And that’s exactly what Uncle Wiggily did. With Sammie’s popgun he shot the balloons full of holes, knowing he could easily mend them again, and when there was no hot air in them to hold them up, down came the airship, fluttering slowly to the earth.
 
“Thank goodness!” cried Nurse Jane. “You have your airship again, Uncle Wiggily. Don’t you ever do that again, Jocko Kinkytail.”
 
“I guess he won’t,” spoke Uncle Wiggily kindly, as he began to mend the burst balloons. And Jocko never did.
 
[Pg 101]
 
And if the rubber plant in our yard doesn’t stretch over the fence and pick a rose off the gooseberry bush, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the butterfly.
 
STORY XVI UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE BUTTERFLY

“Are you going out in your airship this morning?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy of Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, as he left the breakfast table one day.
 
“Well, I did not intend to,” he said. “The electric fan that goes around whizzie-izze, and makes me sail through the clouds, is broken, and I shall have to have it mended. So I am not going in the airship to-day. Was there anything you wanted me to do for you?”
 
“Why, yes, there was,” replied the muskrat lady, as she looked at the end of her tail, to see if it needed dusting. But it did not, I am glad to say. “I wish you would bring me a yeast cake from the store if you are near there. I am going to bake bread,” said Nurse Jane.
 
“Most gladly will I bring you a yeast cake,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, with a low and polite bow. “Only I will walk after it, instead of going in[Pg 103] my airship. And, while I am out walking, instead of airshipping, I will look for an adventure also.”
 
“Very good,” answered Nurse Jane, as she carried the butter out in the hammock where it could swing and keep cool.
 
So Uncle Wiggily started off after the yeast cake and anything else he might find. At first he went along slowly, and then he hurried along a little faster, and pretty soon, as he came to a beautiful white lily, he heard a voice sadly saying:
 
“Oh, dear! What shall I do? I cannot fly after honey, and I shall surely die! Oh, woe is me!”
 
“Ha! Some one in trouble, I imagine!” Uncle Wiggily cried, as he looked all about. But he could see no one. Still he again heard the voice saying:
 
“Oh, how I suffer! If only some one would help me!”
 
“I will help you,” said Uncle Wiggily, “only I cannot see you. Where are you, if you please?”
 
“Look in the lily!” went on the sad voice, and, looking, Uncle Wiggily saw within the flower, which was like a little house, a poor butterfly, with a broken wing.
 
[Pg 104]
 
“Ah, that is too bad! How did it happen?” asked the rabbit gentleman kindly.
 
“I was caught in a hail storm yesterday,” said the butterfly, “and the hail stones broke one of my wings. I managed to flutter to my home in the lily, but I cannot go out now, as my wing is too sore. And, if I do not fly around among the flowers and suck out the honey, on which I live, I shall surely die.”
 
“Ha! No, indeed, you will not!” Uncle Wiggily cried. “I will not let you die. I will help you. See, I am going now for Dr. Possum, the animal gentleman who helps us woodland creatures, and mends broken wings and legs and everything like that. He will fix your wing for you, and then as to honey and flowers—well, I can fix that, too. Just don’t worry any more.”
 
“Oh, how good you are!” sighed the poor butterfly.
 
So Uncle Wiggily hurried after Dr. Possum and brought him to the lily house, and then while the butterfly’s broken wing was being mended, with rose leaves and marshmallow candy, Uncle Wiggily went to some kind bees whom he knew, and said:
 
“Now, dear buzzing bees, a friend of mine—a butterfly—has broken her wing. She cannot go fluttering around the flowers, sipping honey.[Pg 105] So, until her wing is better, will you not, every day, carry her a little honey to her home in the white lily?”
 
“Of course we will!” cried the queen bee. “Gladly will we do that. Why, my goodness gracious me sakes alive and some apple blossoms! I should say we would do a kindness like that! Wouldn’t we, bees?”
 
“Buzz! Buzz!” said all the other bees. “Yes! Yes!”
 
“Then everything will be all right,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Thank you!”
 
He hurried back to the butterfly, whose wing Dr. Possum had fixed by this time, and the rabbit gentleman told the poor creature in the lily how he had arranged for the bees to bring her honey every day until her wing was healed.
 
“Oh, you are so good!” she murmured, as she went to sleep.
 
“Pray do not mention it,” said Uncle Wiggily, politely, and then he hurried to the store for the yeast cake.
 
Now comes a little sad part to this story, but I will not make it any longer than I can possibly help.
 
About a week after this, Nurse Jane heard Uncle Wiggily groaning in his bed, and saying:
 
“Oh, dear! How ill I am. It’s that old rheumatism[Pg 106] pain again! Please send for Dr. Possum.”
 
“I will,” said the muskrat lady. And when Dr. Possum came he said:
 
“Uncle Wiggily, you are very ill indeed. You have rheumatism fever, and you must take bitter medicine, and, since the weather is so warm, you must have some one fan you every day with a fan to cool you.”
 
“But who can do it?” asked the rabbit gentleman. “Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, my muskrat housekeeper, is too busy, all my animal children friends have to go to school, so they can graduate, and all my other friends are too busy. No one can come to fan me.”
 
“What about the electric fan on your airship?” asked Nurse Jane.
 
“Alas! that is broken,” said Uncle Wiggily, and he felt very ill indeed. He needed fanning then and there.
 
“I don’t know what to do,” spoke Dr. Possum. “I would stay and fan you myself, but I have to call on the sick animals. I don’t know who can fan you.”
 
“Oh, please let me!” cried a voice at the window, and in flew the butterfly, whose broken wing was all well now. “I was coming over to thank Uncle Wiggily,” she said, “and I heard[Pg 107] what you said. I would just love to perch on his pillow and fan him with my wings.”
 
“The very thing!” cried Dr. Possum. So the butterfly lady perched herself on Uncle Wiggily’s pillow, and with her beautiful wings fluttering up and down, she fanned him, making a lovely cool breeze, so that he soon fell asleep. And with the gentle fanning, and because of Dr. Possum’s medicine, the rabbit gentleman was soon all well again.
 
So that shows you should always help a butterfly when you can, as you never can tell when a butterfly might help you.
 
And that’s all I can tell you to-night, but on the next page, if the garden rake doesn’t jump over the fence and play tag with the rose bush and get all scratched, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the sawdust.
STORY XVII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE SAWDUST

“You’re off again, I see,” spoke Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, one day, to Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, for whom she kept house.
 
“Yes, I thought I would go out for a little ride,” answered Mr. Longears, as he blew some heated air into the toy circus balloons of his airship. “It is a lovely day, and perhaps I may meet with an adventure; who knows?”
 
“True enough, who knows?” agreed Nurse Jane. “Well, I hope if you do have an adventure it will be a pleasant one.”
 
An adventure, you know, children, is something that happens to you, like falling down stairs. That’s an unpleasant adventure. Finding a penny rolling up hill is a pleasant adventure. That’s the difference, you see.
 
So Uncle Wiggily started off in his airship, which was made from one of Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy’s old clothes baskets, some toy circus[Pg 109] balloons, a Japanese umbrella and an electric fan.
 
The old gentleman rabbit had not ridden so very far, sailing above the tree tops, as he was, before, all of a sudden, he heard a sad little voice crying:
 
“Oh, dear! Oh, isn’t that too bad? Oh, my poor Cora Ann Multiplicationtable!”
 
“Ha! Some one in trouble!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, looking down. “I must see if I cannot help them.”
 
Then he saw Susie Littletail, the rabbit girl, sitting on a stump, and looking at something in her paws.
 
“It must be her doll,” thought Uncle Wiggily “For the doll’s name is Cora Ann Multiplicationtable. I’ll go down and see what is the trouble.”
 
Down he went, and he found poor Susie crying sadly.
 
“What has happened?” asked Uncle Wiggily, kindly.
 
“Oh, all the sawdust stuffing has run out of my doll,” said the little rabbit girl. “I was carrying her out to get the air, for she has been ill, and all of a sudden, one of her legs caught in a thorn bush, ripping a hole in the cloth. Out ran the sawdust before I could stop it. Look!”[Pg 110] And Poor Susie held up Cora Ann Multiplicationtable. The doll was as limp and slimpsy as a sheet of blotting paper after it has fallen into the ink well.
 
“Oh, that is too bad,” said Uncle Wiggily, “but perhaps I can help you. I’ll try.”
 
“Can you make her well again?” asked Susie, hopefully.
 
“Why, yes, I think so,” answered the rabbit gentleman. “I will get some more sawdust, and stuff her with it.”
 
“Oh, joy!” cried Susie, clapping her paws. “Then I will be happy again, for I love my doll Cora Ann Multiplicationtable very much. I hope you can cure her.”
 
“Well, I’ll go get the sawdust and try,” said Uncle Wiggily.
 
Into his airship he jumped, and up above the tree tops he went, to sail about, looking for sawdust. He peered all around, Uncle Wiggily did, but he saw no sawdust. Sawdust, you know, is little, fine grains of wood, made when the carpenter saws a board in two pieces to mend the fence.
 
“Well, I guess I can’t find any sawdust up here,” said the rabbit gentleman, “after a while I’ll have to go down to the earth again.”
 
Down he went, and, though he looked all over,[Pg 111] he could find no sawdust. He thought perhaps he might meet a wagon-load of it, going to the butcher shop, for butchers put sawdust on their store floors instead of carpet. But no wagon-loads of sawdust were to be seen.
 
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “No sawdust down here, and none up in the air. I wonder where I can find any for Susie’s doll? I know, I’ll take a little trip down to the seashore in my airship. If I can’t find any sawdust there, perhaps I can bring back some seashore sand with which to stuff Susie’s doll. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.”
 
Up above the tree tops the rabbit gentleman went again in his airship, and soon he was at the seashore.
 
Up and down the beach he hopped, looking for sawdust, but he could see none. If there had ever been any the wind must have blown it away long ago.
 
“Oh, dear!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “This is too bad! I guess I’ll have to take back the sand after all.”
 
“Why, what is the trouble, if I may ask?” inquired a voice out in the salty sea waves, and Uncle Wiggily looked and saw the queerest fish he had ever beheld. It had a very long nose, and sticking out on either side of this nose were sharp[Pg 112] teeth. But Uncle Wiggily was not frightened.
 
“What is the trouble?” the fish asked again.
 
“Why, I want some sawdust for Susie’s doll, Cora Ann Multiplicationtable,” answered the rabbit gentleman, “but I can find none.”
 
“Ha! Say no more!” cried the queer fish very politely. “Sawdust! I will give you all the sawdust you want. Just wait a minute.”
 
“Ha! How can you give me sawdust, if I may be so bold as to ask?” cried Uncle Wiggily.
 
“Why, I am a sawfish,” was the reply. “I can saw sawdust.” Then the fish gave a flop of his tail and out on the beach he jumped. He soon found a big log that had been washed up by the waves, and then, with his long nose covered with teeth, which were just like those of a saw, the fish sawed back and forth on the log with his nose, and made a lot of sawdust for Uncle Wiggily.
 
The rabbit gentleman caught the sawdust in his tall silk hat, and then thanking the sawfish, who jumped back into the ocean to wash his face, Uncle Wiggily hurried off in his airship to take the sawdust to Susie for her doll.
 
“Oh, how kind you are!” cried the little rabbit girl.
 
 
“Pray do not mention it,” politely said Uncle Wiggily, as he helped stuff the sawdust into [Pg 113]Cora Ann Multiplicationtable. Soon she was as plump and fat as ever. So you see a sawfish is of some use in this world, after all.
 
And on the page after this, if the little dog’s collar doesn’t go to the laundry and get all wet in the bluing water, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the dusty carpet.
STORY XVIII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE DUSTY CARPET

“Be careful, please! Look out! Kindly wipe your feet!” cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, was going into his hollow stump bungalow one day, after he had been out riding in his airship.
 
“Why, what is the matter?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Don’t I always wipe my feet, Nurse Jane?” and this time the rabbit gentleman was very particular to give them an extra polish, or two, on the door-mat before entering.
 
“Oh, yes! as a rule you are very good that way,” said Nurse Jane politely, as she looked at her tail to see if Sammie Littletail, the boy rabbit, had tied any knots in it for a joke. But he had not, I am glad to say.
 
“Yes, as a rule, you are very careful,” went on Nurse Jane, “but you see I am house cleaning, and I have just scrubbed the floors, and so I don’t want a speck of dirt on them.”
 
[Pg 115]
 
“Ah, ha! I see! House cleaning!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “Well, I suppose it has to be done once in a while, but I do not like it at all. I think I will go to my room and read, and when supper is ready, call me, please.”
 
“I will,” promised Nurse Jane, and then she went on looking for moth-millers, which eat up your clothes, and she hunted for dust in all the corners, Nurse Jane did, and she swept and cleaned, and she had a great old time, she did!
 
“My, this is awful!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, as he went inside the hollow stump bungalow. “Why, there is hardly room to move!”
 
And well might he say so, for the chairs and tables were all scattered about, the carpets and rugs were piled in the middle of the floor, and the whole place seemed very much upset, indeed.
 
“Well, I suppose it’s always this way when house cleaning has to be done,” thought Uncle Wiggily, with a sigh. “I must put up with it.”
 
Then he stumbled over a stool, tripped on a chair, fell over a roll of carpet, and finally he reached his room, and sat down to read a book about how to make yellow carrots turn pink by coloring them with Easter eggs.
 
By and by after a while, Uncle Wiggily began to feel hungry.
 
“I wish I had something to eat,” he said,[Pg 116] looking in the book at a large picture of a red, white and blue turnip, with a pink ribbon tied on it. “I wonder if supper is not nearly ready?”
 
Uncle Wiggily went to the door of his room and listened. He wanted to see if he could hear, down in the kitchen, the rattle of dishes and the clatter of the knives and forks. That would show Nurse Jane was setting the table, and when she set the table it was, nearly always, meal time.
 
But Uncle Wiggily could hear nothing but the moving and scraping of chairs about on the floor, and the flip-flop of the dusting cloth as Nurse Jane snapped it here and there, knocking the dust off the furniture upon the carpet, so she could not see it so plainly.
 
“Ha! Hum!” murmured Uncle Wiggily. “That doesn’t sound much like supper. I shall have to wait a bit longer.”
 
So he waited and waited, but there came no welcome sound of the rattle of dishes, nor the clatter of knives and forks. Nor was there any nice smell of ice cream frying on the stove, nor of peanuts boiling in the tea kettle. Nothing like supper at all.
 
“Well, this is very strange!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, as he got up from his chair about the forty-’leventh time to listen if supper were ready.[Pg 117] “Something must have happened to Nurse Jane. I’ll go look,” he said.
 
Putting aside his book, down stairs the rabbit gentleman went, and he saw the muskrat lady in the yard, stretching a dusty carpet out on the green grass.
 
“Ahem! Pray pardon and excuse me, Nurse Jane,” said Uncle Wiggily, “but may I ask when tea will be ready?” You see he said tea to be more polite like.
 
“Tea!” exclaimed Nurse Jane. “Why, I can not give you your supper, Wiggy, until I have beaten all the dust out of this dusty carpet. And it will take me some time, Wiggy.” You see she called him Wiggy for short, because she was very busy at house cleaning.
 
“No supper until that carpet is beaten?” cried Uncle Wiggily, sad and disappointed like.
 
“No, indeed,” answered Nurse Jane. Then, with her long tail, which was like a carpet beater stick, the muskrat lady began to whip the dust out of the dusty carpet to make it clean.
 
“Oh, my! That is going to take a long time!” thought the rabbit gentleman. “I shall be very hungry indeed before I get any supper this evening, if I can’t get it until that carpet is beaten.”
 
So he waited and waited, and Nurse Jane kept[Pg 118] on beating the dusty carpet with her long tail, and Uncle Wiggily was getting more and more hungry, when, all of a sudden, he heard some voices shouting:
 
“That’s the way to run! Throw the ball! Slide to home base! Put him out! Over the fence! Hurray! A home run!”
 
“Ha! Animal boys playing ball!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I have an idea! I’ll give them five cents each, and get them to beat the dusty carpet with the baseball bats! Then Nurse Jane will not have to do it and can get supper for me!”
 
Out he went to the vacant lot where the animal boys were playing ball. Charlie, the chicken chap, was at the bat.
 
“Boys, will you beat a dusty carpet for Nurse Jane?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “I would do it myself, only my rheumatism is so bad that I can’t!”
 
“Surely, we will beat it!” cried Jimmie Wibblewobble, the duck. So the animal boys soon beat the dusty carpet with their baseball bats, and Uncle Wiggily gave them five cents each for ice cream cones.
 
And, shortly after that, Nurse Jane made ready the rabbit gentleman’s supper, and everybody was happy, and when the carpet was no[Pg 119] longer dusty, house cleaning time was over, and Uncle Wiggily could live in peace and quietness and he was glad.
 
And that’s the end of this story, but if the ivy vine doesn’t climb up in my window and pull the clothes off the rubber doll’s bed I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the little lamb.
 
STORY XIX UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE LITTLE LAMB

Uncle Wiggily, the old gentleman rabbit, was out in the yard of his hollow stump bungalow one morning, putting a new hair ribbon on his airship, so that it might flutter in the wind and look pretty. All of a sudden Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the nice muskrat lady housekeeper, called to him.
 
“Oh, Uncle Wiggily, would you mind going to the store for me?” she asked.
 
“Not at all,” answered the rabbit gentleman politely. “What is it you wish?” And he took off his tall silk hat and bowed.
 
“I need a loaf of bread, some sugar and a bottle of milk,” answered the muskrat lady.
 
“Say no more!” Uncle Wiggily exclaimed, with another polite bow. “You shall have them at once. I will go to the store right away in my airship.”
 
“Here is the money,” went on Nurse Jane. “Be careful not to lose it.”
 
[Pg 121]
 
“I’ll try,” answered Uncle Wiggily with a laugh.
 
Off he started for the store, sailing above the tops of the trees in his airship, which was made from one of Nurse Jane’s old clothes baskets, some toy circus balloons to lift it in the air, a Japanese umbrella to keep off the rain, and an electric fan, that went around whizzie-izzie. The electric fan pushed the airship along through the air, you see.
 
Well, Uncle Wiggily had not gone very far before, all of a sudden, something happened to his airship. The electric fan became all twisted up in the balloons, and the sofa cushions, which were in the clothes basket, to make a soft place for Uncle Wiggily to fall out on, in case of accidents—these sofa cushions began turning somersaults, and the first thing the rabbit gentleman knew he himself, was falling down.
 
Down and down he went, faster and faster. The sofa cushions toppled out of the basket, by themselves, and Uncle Wiggily said:
 
“Well, I think I myself am to be bumped very hard this time!”
 
But he was not. Just then, down below on the ground, there came along a wagon with a lot of sheep’s fleeces in it. Sheep’s fleeces are wool, you know. Men cut the wool, or the long, fluffy[Pg 122] hair, off the backs of sheep, and it is woven into cloth and made into clothes. It does not hurt the sheep to cut off the wool, any more than it hurts to cut your hair.
 
So Uncle Wiggily fell out of his airship on top of this load of wool, which was not yet woven into cloth, and he was not hurt a bit, for he bounced up and down (like the circus man in the net) on the fluffy wool.
 
“Ha! That was very kind of you to come along just when you did to catch me as I fell,” said Uncle Wiggily to the man who drove the wool wagon.
 
“Oh, do not thank me,” spoke the man. “Thank those sheep over there. The wool was sheared off their backs, and when the nicest sheep lady of them all saw you falling just now she told me to drive over here quickly as I could so that I might be ready for you to fall on.”
 
“Ah, then it is you I have to thank,” said Uncle Wiggily to the sheep, with a low, polite bow. “You have done me a great favor. Perhaps, some day, I may be able to do you one.”
 
“Pray do not mention it,” said the sheep, also politely.
 
Then Uncle Wiggily mended his airship, sailed on to the store in it, and bought the things Nurse Jane wanted. On his way home, as he was flying[Pg 123] over a green field, he heard a sad voice down below crying:
 
“Oh, my little lamb is lost! Oh, where can he be! Oh, isn’t this too bad!”
 
“Ha! That is my friend, the sheep lady, on whose wool I fell,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Now is my chance to do her a favor.”
 
Down he went in his airship, and he asked:
 
“What has happened, Mrs. Sheep? You seem to be in trouble.”
 
“I am in trouble,” sadly answered the mamma sheep. “My little lamb baby has strayed away, and is lost, I fear. Oh, I am so sorry!”
 
“Never fear!” said Uncle Wiggily, bravely. “I will go look for your little lost lamb in my airship. You were kind to me, and I am only too glad to be kind to you.”
 
“That is very good of you,” said the mamma sheep.
 
Up in the air went Uncle Wiggily. He sailed around and around, looking down on the ground for the little lost lamb, but all the rabbit gentleman could see were trees, woods and green fields.
 
“I wonder if I can ever find that little lost lamb for the mamma sheep whose wool saved me from a bad fall?” thought Uncle Wiggily. “I must try my best.”
 
[Pg 124]
 
So he looked and he looked again, and, all of a sudden, he heard a little voice crying:
 
“Baa! Baa! Baa!”
 
“Ha! There is the little lost lamb crying for its mamma,” said Uncle Wiggily. He looked down over the side of his clothes basket airship, and there, on the earth below, he saw the little lamb, caught fast in a prickly briar bush. The thorns and stickers of the bush had become entangled in the lamb’s wool, and it could not get loose, no matter how it tried.
 
“Baa! Baa! Baa! I shall never see my mamma again!” cried the poor little lamb, who had wandered away and become lost in the bushes. “Oh, where is my mamma?”
 
“Ha! I will take you to her!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. Down, again, he went in his airship, and, with a pair of scissors he had in his pocket, Uncle Wiggily soon cut off the briars from the bramble bush so he could loosen the little lamb. Then, in his paws, Uncle Wiggily carried the lamb to the airship, and put it on the soft sofa cushions.
 
“Oh, I am so hungry!” bleated the little lamb.
 
“And I have just the things for you to eat!” cried Uncle Wiggily. Then he gave the little lamb some of the bread, milk and sugar, he had[Pg 125] bought at the store, and soon they were at the field where the lamb lived with its mamma.
 
And, Oh! how glad the mamma sheep was to see her lamb again! She thanked Uncle Wiggily again and again, and Uncle Wiggily blushed behind his ears, he was so bashful-like. So you see it is sometimes a good thing to fall out of an airship upon a load of wool.
 
And very soon, if the trolley car doesn’t slip off the track, and run over the wax doll’s rubber ball, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the soap bubbles.
STORY XX UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE SOAP BUBBLES

“Well, do you think anything will happen to you this morning?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, of Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, as she saw him starting off for a ride in his airship one day.
 
“You never can tell,” he answered. “I may have the most wonderful adventure, and again I may just sail around, and come back again, with nothing more than a yeast cake.”
 
“Speaking of yeast cakes, one would be very good for you to carry along with you in your airship,” said Nurse Jane.
 
“Why?” Uncle Wiggily wanted to know.
 
“Because yeast makes the bread rise, and it might make your airship rise, in case your circus balloons were to burst, and let you down,” the muskrat lady replied.
 
“I am very glad you mentioned it,” said Uncle Wiggily, making his most polite bow. “I shall get a yeast cake the very first chance I have.”
 
[Pg 127]
 
Then he went out sailing in his airship, but he had not gone very far above the tree tops before he heard, down below him, a voice saying:
 
“Oh, dear! I wish I had something to do!”
 
“Ha! Somebody else in trouble!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “I must go down and see if I cannot help them.”
 
So down he went in his airship, and whom do you suppose it was he found? Why, Arabella, the little chicken girl, was sitting on the doorstep of the hencoop, crying as hard as she could cry.
 
“Oh, what is the matter?” asked Uncle Wiggily kindly.
 
“I have no one to play with!” sobbed Arabella. “You see I am just getting over the mumps, and none of the other animal children, who have not had the mumps, want to play with me. And nobody but I has had the mumps!” she sobbed.
 
“That is too bad!” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “But perhaps I can make up a little fun for you. Do you like to blow soap bubbles?”
 
“Oh, indeed I do!” cried Arabella, making her wing feathers wiggle. “I just love to do it! But I have no soap suds, and no pipe with which to blow the bubbles.”
 
“Say no more!” cried Uncle Wiggily in a[Pg 128] jolly voice. “I will get everything you need.”
 
Off he went in his airship to the soap bubble store. There he bought a pipe, and a nice cake of scented soap, that smelled like a barber shop. Coming back to where Arabella still sat, all alone on the doorstep of the chicken coop, Uncle Wiggily made her a nice bowl full of soapy suds.
 
“Now you may blow some nice bubbles, Arabella,” spoke the rabbit gentleman. “I will watch you for a while, and then I will ride along in my airship, and look for an adventure.”
 
“Aren’t you afraid of catching my mumps?” asked Arabella with a laugh.
 
“Oh, bless your hair ribbon! I’ve had ’em!” cried the old rabbit gentleman, jolly like.
 
Then he watched Arabella blow the bubbles. And what large ones the little chicken girl blew from the bowl of the pipe! The bubbles were red, and green and blue and yellow and purple in color. They floated up in the air like balloons.
 
“My, you are certainly a fine bubble-blower!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “But I must go now.”
 
“Thank you, for making some fun for me,” spoke Arabella most politely.
 
Then she blew bubbles by herself, as Uncle Wiggily sailed away in his airship. He had not gone very far before, all of a sudden, out of a[Pg 129] tree flew a bad wasp, with a stinger in the end of his tail. Oh, this wasp-bee was very angry! I think perhaps he had had no honey that day, for his breakfast.
 
“What do you mean, by flying over my tree?” asked the wasp of Uncle Wiggily, saucy like.
 
“Excuse me,” spoke the rabbit gentleman, “but I did not harm your tree, just sailing over it in my airship.”
 
“Yes you did!” buzzed the wasp. “You made the leaves flutter with your electric fan. Now I am going to sting your balloons.”
 
And, before Uncle Wiggily could stop her, that bad wasp flew up, and stung a hole in every one of the toy circus balloons that floated on top of the rabbit gentleman’s airship.
 
“Oh, I must get away from here!” cried Uncle Wiggily, and, making his airship go as fast as he could, the rabbit gentleman was soon far away from the bad wasp.
 
But alas! Likewise unhappiness. The balloons were filled with holes, from the sting of the wasp, and all the air began leaking out of them. The airship began to fall, having nothing to hold it up.
 
“Oh, my!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Here I go again!”
 
And down to the ground he came, only the[Pg 130] sofa cushions in the clothes basket made a soft place for him on which to fall, and so he was not hurt.
 
“Oh, dear!” Uncle Wiggily exclaimed. “My airship is spoiled!” He tried to make it go up again, but, of course, it would not, with the balloons all burst as they were, so they could not hold air.
 
“What am I to do?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “I should have brought along a yeast cake, as Nurse Jane told me to do, and then I could rise. Alas, now I cannot go up like a loaf of bread.”
 
“Oh, yes you can, Uncle Wiggily!” exclaimed a voice near him, and there stood Arabella, the chicken girl, with her pipe, and bowl of soap suds for blowing bubbles.
 
“How can I go up when the balloons are burst?” asked the rabbit gentleman.
 
“With my soap bubbles!” cackled Arabella. “Soap bubbles are very light, and will rise in the air just like balloons. I will blow you a lot of bubbles, you can fasten them to your airship, and up you will go.” Then she blew forty-’leven bubbles, or maybe more, for all I know. Uncle Wiggily caught them, and fastened them with silk threads, and cobwebs, which a kind spider lady spun for him, to his clothes basket airship, just as the toy circus balloons had been fastened.
 
[Pg 131]
 
And the bubbles were so light, and went up in the air so nicely, that they took the airship and Uncle Wiggily up with them. The old gentleman rabbit just had time to thank Arabella for blowing the soap bubbles for him, and then he was far above the trees, sailing away.
 
“Arabella was certainly a smart chicken girl to think of raising my airship with soap bubbles!” cried Uncle Wiggily, and then later on he stopped in the drug store, and had a quart of strawberry ice cream sent to the hencoop for the little chicken girl, and the old rabbit gentleman took another quart home for Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy. So you see, sometimes it is a good thing to have a wasp sting toy circus balloons on an airship.
 
And, on the page after this, if the vegetable man doesn’t put an orange on our clothes post, for the pussy cat to play tag with, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the cake of ice.
STORY XXI UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE CAKE OF ICE
 
“My goodness me sakes alive and a bushel of apple sauce!” exclaimed Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, one evening. She had come out on the front porch of the hollow stump bungalow and was fanning herself with a cabbage leaf, left over from Uncle Wiggily’s supper.
 
“Why, what in the world is the matter, Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy?” asked the old rabbit gentleman, as he looked up at the tip of his ear to see if a mosquito was sitting there in a rocking chair. But none was, I am glad to say. “What is the matter, Nurse Jane?” he asked.
 
“Matter!” cried the muskrat lady, “it is so very hot! That is what’s the matter. And it will be warmer to-morrow!”
 
“How can you tell?” Uncle Wiggily wanted to know. “To-morrow is not here yet, and when it comes it will be to-day instead of to-morrow.”
 
 
“I suppose that is one of your jokes,” spoke [Pg 133]Nurse Jane, as she tied her tail in two knots and part of another one, so she would not step on it when she danced the corn meal flop, which she and Uncle Wiggily did every evening. “Another joke, eh, Wiggy, about to-morrow never coming?” repeated Nurse Jane.
 
“Oh, I will have my joke once in a while,” chuckled the rabbit gentleman. “But what makes you think it is going to be so warm?” and Uncle Wiggily took a drink of boiled ice cream cone soda water, so he would not catch cold.
 
“I can tell it is going to be warm because the sunset is so red and fiery,” answered Nurse Jane, as she looked over toward the West, where the sun was going to bed.
 
“Well, tell Mr. Whitewash, the polar bear gentleman, to leave us an extra large piece of ice to-morrow, if it going to be so hot,” said Uncle Wiggily. Then he went over to call on Grandfather Goosey Gander, the goose gentleman, who was out raking up his corn meal garden, so he could have pancakes for breakfast.
 
The next day was indeed very hot. Nurse Jane arose very early, and the first thing she did was to put out, on the front porch of the hollow stump bungalow, a card which had printed on it, in large letters, the word:
 
[Pg 134]
 
ICE.
 
“There!” exclaimed Nurse Jane, as she gave the rose geranium flower a drink of buttermilk, “Mr. Whitewash, the polar bear gentleman, will see that sign and bring us a nice large cake of ice.”
 
But nothing ever turns out, in this world, the way you think it is going to. At least it never does for me. Many a time I have made up my mind, in the morning, that in the evening I would go to a moving picture show. But, when evening came, time and time again, I have had to go to a baseball game. Still one cannot help it. I only mention that to show that you never can tell what will happen.
 
Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy could not, either. When she put out the ice sign she certainly thought Mr. Whitewash would bring in a nice, large cake. But he did not. In fact, Mr. Whitewash did not even see the sign.
 
What happened was this: Soon after Nurse Jane put out the cardboard notice, along came Billie Bushytail, the boy squirrel, and his brother Johnnie.
 
“Oh, Johnnie,” cried Billie, pointing with his paw. “There’s a fine piece of cardboard to make a lemonade sign for us. We can write on the[Pg 135] back of it, ‘LEMONADE: FIVE CENTS A GLASS,’ and put it up over our stand.”
 
“So we can!” exclaimed Billie. Then the squirrel boys, not meaning to do anything wrong, you understand, took down the ice sign Nurse Jane had hung out on Uncle Wiggily’s porch. And those squirrel boys made another sign on the back of the piece of pasteboard, advertising their lemonade sale, which they held on their lawn. I’ll tell you about that in another story.
 
Well, it got warmer and warmer, and it was nearly noon. The small piece of ice in Nurse Jane’s refrigerator had melted and she needed more.
 
“I wonder what has happened to Mr. Whitewash, the Polar bear?” she remarked. “He hasn’t come yet.” She went out to look down the street, and she saw Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady, on her porch.
 
“Has the Polar ice bear been past yet?” asked Nurse Jane.
 
“Long ago,” answered Mrs. Wibblewobble. Then Nurse Jane saw that her sign was gone, and though she did not know who had taken it, she knew the ice bear had not seen it, and that was the reason he brought in no ice. When he saw no sign he supposed his animal customers wanted no ice, and drove on.
 
[Pg 136]
 
“Oh, dear!” cried Nurse Jane. “No ice, and it is very hot. It is hotter even than I thought it would be. My butter will melt and the milk will sour. Oh, what shall I do?”
 
“Hush! Calm yourself, my dear! Have no fear!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “I will go down in my airship to the factory where Mr. Whitewash, the Polar bear gentleman, makes his ice, and bring a cake home for you.”
 
“That will be lovely!” cried Nurse Jane, fanning herself with the coal shovel, she was so excited-like.
 
It did not take Uncle Wiggily long to go after the cake of ice, as his airship went very fast. Soon he was on his way back to the hollow stump with it, flying very swiftly, and thinking how nice it would be to have a glass of ice water.
 
But, as he rode along over the tree-tops, down below he heard voices crying:
 
“Why, it’s raining! It’s raining hard!” A number of the animal people were running in the house after their umbrellas.
 
“Raining!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “It isn’t raining, or I’d feel the drops. Besides, there isn’t a cloud in the sky!”
 
“The rain is coming from your airship!” cried Sammie Littletail, the boy rabbit who stood[Pg 137] down below on the ground. “The water is dropping from your airship.”
 
“Oh, it is the cake of ice! The ice is melting and running through the holes in the clothes basket,” spoke Uncle Wiggily. And, surely enough, the cake of ice had melted and the water of it fell from the airship and made every one think it was raining. And when Uncle Wiggily reached the hollow stump, there was not a bit of ice left—it had all melted.
 
But, as it happened, Mr. Whitewash, the Polar bear gentleman, came past on his return trip and in his wagon, where it could not melt, he had a big cake of ice. This he gave to Nurse Jane, for her refrigerator and all was well. Everybody was happy, and Uncle Wiggily said the next time he went after a cake of ice he would wrap it up in a blanket so it would not melt and make his friends believe it was raining, when it was not.
 
So that shows you a hot day is of some use after all, and on the page after this if the lemonade pitcher doesn’t go to the ink well for a glass of jelly, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and Charlie Chick.
STORY XXII UNCLE WIGGILY AND CHARLIE CHICK

“Well, what are you doing, Charlie, my boy?” asked Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, of the little chicken chap, one day, as he saw Charlie on the shores of the duck pond with some boards, a hammer, a saw, some nails, a fishpole and part of a bed sheet. “What are you making, Charlie?”
 
“I am going to make a sailboat and go sailing across the duck pond,” replied Charlie, as he ruffled up his tail feathers and made a polite bow. Chicken boys always ruffle up their tail feathers when they bow. It’s a way they’ve been taught at school, so Charlie did just right, you see.
 
“A sailboat, eh?” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “Well, I hope you have a nice sail on the duck pond.”
 
“Thank you, Uncle Wiggily. Don’t you want to come with me?” asked Charlie still more politely as he gave a little crow. Whenever a chicken chap gives you an invitation to go anywhere[Pg 139] with him, he always crows. They are brought up that way, so Charlie did the right act again, you see.
 
“Sail with you? No, I thank you, Charlie,” replied Uncle Wiggily. “You see, I am on my way in my airship to go to the store for Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy. She wants some oranges to put in the potato cakes for supper. Some other time I will sail with you.”
 
And the old rabbit gentleman, who really was out for a sail in his airship, started off again for the store. He had been sailing overhead, but, when he saw Charlie on the shore of the duck pond, Uncle Wiggily came down to see what the chicken boy was doing.
 
“Well, now if I hoist my sail on the fishpole I think my boat will be finished, and I can cross the duck pond,” said Charlie to himself, after a bit. He had hammered and sawed and pounded, nailing together board and stick, until really he had made quite a nice chicken boat.
 
So, while Uncle Wiggily was on the way to the store in his airship, Charlie started to sail across the duck pond, which was very large just then, as so much water had rained in it.
 
“Oh, this is great!” Charlie crowed, as the wind blew on his sail and pushed the boat along through the water. “I only wish I had[Pg 140] some of my friends aboard to enjoy it with me.”
 
Charlie was always that way—not a bit selfish.
 
So he sailed and he sailed, back and forth across the pond, and, now and then, he looked up to the sky to see if he could see any signs of Uncle Wiggily coming back. But he saw nothing of the rabbit gentleman in his airship.
 
But the wind, which had been blowing more and more gently, suddenly stopped altogether, and there Charlie’s boat was, becalmed out in the middle of the duck pond, far from shore.
 
“Oh ho!” cried Charlie. “This is not very pleasant. I wonder how I am going to get to shore?”
 
He looked all about him, but he could see no way of getting to dry land unless the wind should blow him. For Charlie had in his boat no oars, so he could not row. He had no pole with which to push, though he might have taken down the fishpole on which was fastened his sail. But he did not want to do this.
 
“And the duck pond is too deep for me to wade,” said Charlie to himself, “and I cannot swim. Now, if I were only a duck, I would be all right. I could then jump off and swim. But, as it is, I must stay here until the wind comes again, to blow on my sail and send me to shore.”
 
So Charlie waited, and it was not much fun.[Pg 141] It grew late, and soon, he knew, it would be supper time. Still he was out in the middle of the duck pond, far from shore.
 
“Help! Help!” crowed Charlie. “Will no one help me get to land in my boat?”
 
No one answered him. If Lulu or Alice or Jimmie Wibblewobble, the duck children, had been near there I am sure they would have helped Charlie. But all the ducks were away that day, having gone to a Mother Goose party. So no one heard Charlie call.
 
“Oh, if there was only some wind!” cried the chicken boy. “I think I shall whistle for a breeze, as I have read of sailors doing when they want their boats to go.”
 
So Charlie whistled all the tunes he could think of, such as: “Please Don’t Tip the Milk Can Over,” and “Who Put Soap in Dollie’s Eye?”
 
But, no matter how much the chicken boy whistled, no breeze came to blow against his sail and waft him to shore.
 
“Well, I guess I will have to blow my own wind,” said Charlie, after a bit. “That may help.” So he puffed up his chest, and through his bill he blew a strong blast on the sail. But it did no good, any more than it would do you good if you took hold of your shoe laces and tried to raise yourself up off the floor.
 
[Pg 142]
 
“Oh, dear!” cried Charlie. “I guess I’ll have to stay here all night, and I want to be home for supper, because they’re going to have corn meal shortcake. Oh will no one help me?”
 
But no one came near the duck pond and no wind blew, and the boat was still out in the middle of the water. It did look as though Charlie would be out all night, as he once was with the wild turkey.
 
“Oh, will no one help me?” cried Charlie, for the last time.
 
“Yes, I will!” shouted a voice up in the air, and Charlie, who was just going to put his head under his wing and go to sleep, roused up and crowed:
 
“Oh, are you going to help me? Who are you?”
 
“Uncle Wiggily Longears, in his airship!” was the answer. “I see what is the trouble. You have no wind for your sailboat. Here, catch that!” And, hovering up in the air over the chicken boy’s boat, the rabbit gentleman dropped down a clothes line he had bought in the store for Nurse Jane. “Hold fast to that, Charlie!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll keep hold of my end and I’ll soon pull you to shore with my airship.”
 
Charlie held the rope tightly in his claw, and off started Uncle Wiggily in the airship, towing[Pg 143] the chicken boat along over the duck pond. Soon he was safe on shore and, after thanking the rabbit gentleman; Charlie said:
 
“The next time I go sailing I am going to take a balloon full of wind along with me to blow my sail. Then I will be all right.”
 
So this shows you a clothes line is good for something, after all, and on the page after this, if our window shade doesn’t roll up so fast that it jumps through the dish pan, like a circus lady off an elephant’s back, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and Lulu Wibblewobble.
STORY XXIII UNCLE WIGGILY AND LULU WIBBLEWOBBLE

“My goodness me sakes alive, and some peanut pancakes!” cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, as she saw Uncle Wiggily, the rabbit gentleman, out in the yard one day punching some sofa cushions. “What in the world are you doing, Wiggy?” asked Nurse Jane.
 
“Well,” replied the old gentleman rabbit for whom the muskrat lady kept house, “I am trying to make these sofa cushions softer, if you please, Nurse Jane.”
 
“Softer? What for?” she asked.
 
“So they will be easier for me to fall on, in case I have any accidents when out riding in my airship,” replied Uncle Wiggily. “You see, I am sort of shaking up the feathers inside the cushions, by punching them with my paws. Not to hurt them! No, indeed, not for the world would I hurt the feathers,” cried the rabbit gentleman.
 
“So that’s why you are punching the cushions?” asked Nurse Jane, as she folded her long[Pg 145] tail around her neck to keep the mosquitoes from biting her. “Well, all I have to say is, Wiggy, that you never will make your cushions soft that way.”
 
“No?” asked Uncle Wiggily, sort of surprised like.
 
“No, indeed,” answered Nurse Jane. “The trouble is that you need more feathers in the cushions. That will make them nice and soft for you to fall on in case your airship turns a somersault.”
 
“Good!” cried the old rabbit gentleman. “I am glad you mentioned it. I will take a ride over to the Wibblewobble duck penhouse at once, and have Mrs. Wibblewobble put more feathers in the cushions. That will make them lovely and soft. Queer, isn’t it, that I should have thought punching the pillows was the proper thing to do—very queer, wasn’t it, Nurse Jane?”
 
“Oh, well, you are often queer, Wiggy,” she said, calling him that for short. “Once more doesn’t make much difference.”
 
So Nurse Jane went in the house to give the breakfast dishes their bath, and put talcum powder on them, and Uncle Wiggily started off in his airship for the Wibblewobble duck house to have the old sofa cushions made over, with new feathers inside.
 
[Pg 146]
 
Away he sailed, above the tree tops, in the clothes basket of his airship, with red, white and blue toy circus balloons lifting him, the Japanese umbrella keeping off the sun and the electric fan in the back going around whizzie-izzie, like anything; if you will kindly allow me to say so.
 
Uncle Wiggily sat on the old sofa cushions, and he did not sail very high up in the air on this trip.
 
“For,” said the rabbit gentleman to himself, “if I should have an accident, and fall from a great height, I might get hurt, as the cushions are so thin.”
 
You see Uncle Wiggily always carried these sofa cushions in the clothes basket part of his airship, where he sat to steer it.
 
Pretty soon he was at the duck house.
 
“Will you please fix my sofa cushions for me, by stuffing them with new feathers?” he asked the duck lady.
 
“To be sure I will,” answered Mrs. Wibblewobble, with a polite quack. “Give them to me.”
 
Uncle Wiggily took the sofa cushions out of his clothes basket airship, and Mrs. Wibblewobble began filling them with some of her old feathers she did not need any more. All of a sudden, along came Lulu Wibblewobble, the duck girl.
 
[Pg 147]
 
“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” Lulu cried, “while you are waiting, please give me a ride in your airship!”
 
“Oh, no, I am afraid I cannot,” he answered. “You see the sofa cushions are being stuffed by your mother.”
 
“Oh, well, I don’t mind that. Give me a ride without them!” cried Lulu. “We had examinations in school to-day, and now I want a little fun.”
 
“What examination did you have?” asked the rabbit gentleman.
 
“An examination in quacking and in wing flapping,” answered Lulu. “I think I passed, too. Teacher said I flapped my wings better than any other duck girl in the class.”
 
“Oh, but I am glad to hear that!” Uncle Wiggily cried, for he liked his little duck niece very much. “And, since you have been such a good pupil, I will take you up in my airship,” he said. “Oh, joy!” cried Lulu, flapping her wings and quacking as she had done in the examinations.
 
“But we will not go up very high.” Uncle Wiggily went on. “Since we have not the sofa cushions with us, we might get hurt if we had an accident and fell. So I will only take you up a little way, Lulu.”
 
“Oh, even a little ride will be lovely!” quacked[Pg 148] the duck girl. She and Uncle Wiggily got in the airship, and away they went, about as high as a jumping rope.
 
“Oh, this is lovely!” cried Lulu. “Thank you so much, Uncle Wiggily! It is very good of you.”
 
“Pray do not say so,” spoke the old gentleman rabbit. And then, all at once, something went wrong with the airship, and it shot up, away above the trees. Higher and higher it went before the rabbit gentleman could stop it.
 
“Oh, if we ever fall now—without our sofa cushions!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, “something sure will happen!” And then, all of a sudden, a bad bumble-bee came along, and, with his sharp stinger, he made holes in the toy balloons of Uncle Wiggily’s airship, just as a bad wasp once did. Down the airship began to fall, faster and faster.
 
“Oh, if we hit the ground now, with no soft sofa cushions to sit on, we shall surely be hurt!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “What shall I do?”
 
“I know,” cried Lulu Wibblewobble, the brave duck girl. “I will flap my wings very hard, just as I did in my school examinations to-day, and that will make us fall more slowly, so we will not strike the ground so hard.”
 
“Please do!” cried Uncle Wiggily. And[Pg 149] Lulu did. Faster and faster she flapped her wings, beating the air with them, and this kept up the airship, just as a bird keeps itself up, and made it fall more and more slowly and gently.
 
“Look out!” cried the rabbit gentleman, peeping over the side of the clothes basket. “We are going to bump!”
 
But they did not bump very hard. For, just as they came down to the ground, Mrs. Wibblewobble had finished stuffing the sofa cushions. She ran out, and tossed them under Uncle Wiggily’s airship, and he and Lulu came down on them as lightly as a feather. But, after all, had it not been for the duck girl’s wing-flapping, I do not know what would have happened.
 
So this is all now, if you please, but if the tomato doesn’t jump out of the coffee can, and kiss the cucumber salad in the olive oil, I’ll tell you next, about Uncle Wiggily and the lemonade stand.
STORY XXIV UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE LEMONADE STAND

“My, but it certainly is a warm day!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, the old gentleman rabbit, as he unbuttoned his fur coat and fanned his ears with a horse chestnut leaf. “I don’t know when I have been so warm!”
 
“It is very hot!” agreed Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, as she peeled some eggs for dinner. “I think I would not go up in my airship to-day, if I were you, Mr. Longears.”
 
“Oh, the heat makes no difference to me if I want to take a ride,” the rabbit gentleman answered. “Besides, you forget that I have the big Japanese umbrella over the top of my airship to keep off the hot sun. Yes, I will take a ride, and perhaps I may have an adventure; who knows?”
 
“True enough—who knows?” repeated Nurse Jane. “Well, if you will go, Wiggy, I suppose you will. And, since you are going, would you[Pg 151] mind stopping at the store and bringing me home some honey for supper?”
 
“It will give me the greatest pleasure in the world to bring you some honey, sweetness,” said Uncle Wiggily, politely. Sometimes he called Nurse Jane “sweetness” just for a joke.
 
Well off the old gentleman started in his clothes basket airship. It had been all mended since the time he and Lulu Wibblewobble, the duck girl, rode in it, when the bumble bee stung the balloons.
 
“And the sofa cushions, since Mrs. Wibblewobble put new feathers in them, are better than ever,” said Uncle Wiggily. He had the sofa cushions to fall on, you know.
 
Well, it kept on getting hotter and hotter that day, and, not long after Uncle Wiggily had set off to get the honey for Nurse Jane, Billie Bushytail, the little squirrel boy, said to his brother Johnnie:
 
“I’ll tell you what let’s do! Let’s set up a lemonade stand along the street and sell the nice, cold, sweet lemonade for five cents a glass.”
 
“All right!” cried Johnnie. “We’ll do it!”
 
So they got some old boxes—squirrel size, of course—and their mamma gave them an old tablecloth to spread over the top to make the stand look nice. Then she let the two squirrel[Pg 152] boys take the proper things to make the lemonade—the lemons, the sugar, a pitcher, some glasses and a small piece of ice.
 
“We’ll make a lot of money, and buy ice cream cones!” cried Billie.
 
“That’s what we will!” shouted Johnnie, as he gnawed the shell off a hickory nut.
 
Then the squirrel boys squeezed the juice from the lemons, poured in the water and stirred it up in the pitcher.
 
“Say!” exclaimed Billie at that point, “we ought to have an umbrella over our stand to make it shady. There’s an old one in the house. Let’s put it up.”
 
“All right!” agreed Johnnie, “we will!” They both ran in the house to get the sun umbrella, and, while they were gone, a bad monkey chap, with a very large sweet tooth, sneaked up to the lemonade stand and took all the sugar. You see it had not yet been put into the lemonade pitcher. Yes, sir, the monkey took all the sugar.
 
And when Billie and Johnnie Bushytail had fastened the umbrella up over their stand, and went to look for the sugar to put in the cool lemonade, why, the sugar was not there! You know who had it, though Billie and Johnnie did not.
 
“Oh, what are we going to do?” cried Billie.
 
[Pg 153]
 
“We’ll have to get more sugar!” exclaimed Johnnie.
 
But alas! Likewise sorrowfulness! After giving the squirrel boys the things for the lemonade, Mrs. Bushytail had gone down to the ten and five cent store to buy a new dishpan, and had locked up the squirrel house. For she thought her boys would not want to go in again until she came back.
 
“We can’t get any sugar, and we can’t make any lemonade!” cried Billie, sadly.
 
“Oh, yes we can,” said his brother. “Let’s make it sour—without sugar. Perhaps the folks who buy it won’t mind.”
 
“All right,” agreed Billie. So they made sour lemonade.
 
Then Billie and Johnnie took their places behind the stand, and cried:
 
“Here you are! Nice, cold lemonade! Only five cents a glass!”
 
You notice they were very careful not to say “sweet lemonade,” for that would not have been true.
 
“Ha! Lemonade!” cried Grandfather Goosey Gander, coming along just then. “I’ll take a glass,” and he laid five cents down on the box. Billie filled a glass for him.
 
“Whew! Ha! Oh, mercy me! Why it’s[Pg 154] sour!” cried Grandfather Goosey Gander, making a lot of funny faces as soon as he had sipped the lemonade.
 
“Yes,” said Billie sadly, “it is sour. Some one took our sugar.”
 
“Well, I can’t drink sour lemonade,” spoke the duck gentleman, and he took back his five cents.
 
“Oh, dear!” said Johnnie, sadly.
 
And that’s the way it was. All the animal folk who came along to drink the cold lemonade wouldn’t take it when they found it was sour. They just wrinkled up their noses and took back their money.
 
“Here comes Uncle Wiggily in his airship!” said Billie, after a while. “Maybe he likes sour lemonade.” So they called to him to come down and buy some. The rabbit gentleman, sailing down, laid his nickel on the box. He sipped the lemonade.
 
“Oh me! Oh my! and some soda crackers!” he cried, making his nose twinkle like a star on a frosty night. “That is too sour!”
 
“Yes,” said Billie, sadly. “Some one took our sugar, and we can’t sell any sweet lemonade, and get any money for ice cream cones, and our mamma isn’t home and——”
 
“Stop! Say no more! You have troubles[Pg 155] enough!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I will sweeten your lemonade for you,” and with that he put into the pitcher some of the nice sweet honey he had brought from the store in his airship.
 
“Oh, joy!” cried Billie and Johnnie, tasting the lemonade which now was sweet enough for even Grandfather Goosey Gander. And the squirrel boys sold one pitcherful and part of another one. The honey was better than sugar for sweetening.
 
They made enough money to buy several ice cream cones, and they sent Uncle Wiggily one for giving them the honey, which made their sour lemonade sweet.
 
And pretty soon, if the coal man doesn’t slide a watermelon down the ironing board into the the refrigerator, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the watering hose.
STORY XXV UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE WATERING HOSE

Oh, but it was hot in animal land! It was hot and dry and dusty, for there had been no rain in a long time, and the sun shone brightly, making the leaves on the trees curl up in the heat, and wilting the pretty flowers.
 
“Well, if we don’t get some rain pretty soon,” spoke Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, “the garden will be spoiled, and we can have no strawberry shortcake.”
 
“No strawberry shortcake!” cried Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman for whom Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy kept house. “That will be too bad! But, pray tell me, what has rain to do with strawberry shortcake, if you please, Nurse Jane?”
 
“Rain has everything to do with it, Uncle Wiggily,” said she. “For if it does not rain, the strawberries will not grow, and if we do not have strawberries we can have no shortcake.[Pg 157] That is, unless I put in lemons instead of strawberries.”
 
“Oh, no! That would never do at all!” exclaimed Mr. Longears. “We must have strawberries. I will see what I can do about making it rain.”
 
“How can you?” asked Nurse Jane.
 
“I will go up near the clouds, in my airship,” spoke the old gentleman rabbit, “and I will see if there is in them any rain that is ready to fall down, and wet the thirsty ground. And, maybe, if there is rain in the clouds I can squeeze a little out, as you squeeze water from the sponge in the bath tub.”
 
“I hope you can,” said Nurse Jane, as she went out into the garden to pull up some weeds.
 
Off the old gentleman rabbit started in his clothes basket airship, on and on, up to the clouds. But when he got there he saw no rain in them. The clouds were as dry as a piece of cheese.
 
“No, there is no rain here,” said Uncle Wiggily, sadly. “I wonder what I can do? I would not like Nurse Jane’s garden to dry up, for I am very fond of strawberry shortcake. I wonder what I can do?”
 
Uncle Wiggily in his airship rode on a little farther, and pretty soon, looking down toward[Pg 158] the earth, over the edge of the clothes basket, he saw, far below him, some water spurting and spraying in a beautiful shower.
 
“Ha! There is rain down there!” the rabbit gentleman cried. “I wonder why there is none over at our place? I must go down and see.”
 
So down he went, and there he saw Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow, the two puppy dog boys, squirting water with a hose, which was fastened to the faucet of the kitchen sink.
 
“Now it’s my turn to squirt!” cried Jackie, as Uncle Wiggily jumped out of his airship, which had reached the ground.
 
“No, let me squirt just a little bit more!” begged Peetie, and his brother very kindly did.
 
“Ha! What have you there?” asked the old gentleman rabbit, as he went toward the puppy dog boys.
 
“A watering hose,” said Jackie. “You see it hasn’t rained for so long that our garden is all dried up. So papa got this hose. See, this is how it squirts.”
 
And just then Peetie accidentally moved the end of the hose too much, and a shower of water went all over Uncle Wiggily.
 
“Oh!” cried Peetie, “I didn’t mean to do that.”
 
“I’ll forgive you!” laughed Uncle Wiggily.[Pg 159] “It is so warm that it feels fine to have a hose squirted on you so I don’t care. I must get one for Nurse Jane.”
 
Then it was Jackie’s turn to squirt the hose, and when Peetie handed it to him, the end slipped again, and Grandfather Goosey Gander, who came along just then, was sprayed with a shower of water.
 
“Oh dear! I’m so sorry!” cried Jackie.
 
“It doesn’t matter at all!” cried the old gentleman goose. “I just love water!” And the drops rolled off his back, not wetting him at all, for a goose gentleman’s feathers are made to shed water, just as an umbrella does, you know.
 
“Let me try the hose,” begged Uncle Wiggily, and Jackie did so. “Yes, I really must get Nurse Jane one,” said the rabbit gentleman. “It is as good as a rain shower,” and he sprinkled water all over the dog-garden.
 
Then off he went in his airship to get a watering hose for his garden, leaving Peetie and Jackie to sprinkle theirs, sometimes wetting the sidewalk and sometimes spraying the animal people who went past, just as puppy dog boys will, you know.
 
“Ha! Now we won’t mind whether or not it rains!” cried Uncle Wiggily, when he reached his hollow stump bungalow again.
 
[Pg 160]
 
“Why not?” asked Nurse Jane, fanning herself with the dishpan. “It is hotter than ever. We need rain very badly.”
 
“And we shall have it!” exclaimed the old gentleman rabbit. “See, I have a watering hose,” and he took one from his airship. He had bought it at the rubber store.
 
Soon the hose was attached to the kitchen faucet, and Uncle Wiggily watered the garden. And how the flowers and the lima beans and the strawberry plants lifted up their tired, dusty hot leaves, and drank the cool water that was showered on them.
 
And then, when the garden was nicely watered, Uncle Wiggily heard a noise out in the street, and a tired voice said:
 
“Oh dear! How hot I am! Oh dear!”
 
“Ha! Some one in trouble!” remarked Uncle Wiggily. “I must see if I cannot help them.” He went out in front, and there he saw a poor, tired, dusty ice-wagon horse, who could hardly hold up his head.
 
“I will water you with the hose,” said the rabbit gentleman. “That will cool you off, and rest you.”
 
 
“Please do,” begged the ice-wagon horse, and Uncle Wiggily did. And when the cool water sprayed on the hot and tired horse he felt so much [Pg 161]better that he laughed, and held up his head, and he gave Uncle Wiggily a big cake of ice, like the one Mr. Whitewash, the Polar bear gentleman, sits on, and the ice made the hollow stump bungalow so cool that Uncle Wiggily had a fine sleep that night.
 
And the next day it rained, so Uncle Wiggily did not have to water with the hose. And this shows that you should always be kind to an ice-wagon horse when you can.
 
So if the popcorn ball doesn’t play lawn tennis with the refrigerator and get all melted up, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the thunder storm.
 
STORY XXVI UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE THUNDER STORM

“Well, how is your garden coming on these days?” asked Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, of Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, who kept house for him. “It isn’t drying up any more; is it?”
 
“Oh, no,” she answered, as she tied her long tail in a double knot to keep it from dragging in the dust. “Since you so kindly bought me the watering hose, I can wet the garden whether it rains or not. And that will make everything grow.”
 
“Strawberries too? Will it make them grow?” Uncle Wiggily wanted to know. He was thinking of strawberry shortcake, I guess, for he was very fond of it.
 
“Oh, yes, the strawberries are growing very nicely,” said Nurse Jane, as she looked for the red berries under the green leaves.
 
“And I think you will not have to water with[Pg 163] the hose for several days now,” the muskrat lady went on, as she glanced up at the sky.
 
“Why not?” Uncle Wiggily wanted to know.
 
“Because we are going to have a thunder shower,” said the muskrat lady. “And I think it will be quite a hard one. But it is always cooler after a thunder shower and I like them very much.”
 
“So do I,” agreed Uncle Wiggily. “But if it is going to rain and thunder and lighten I had better go for a ride in my airship as soon as possible. Much as I like storms, I do not want to be caught out in one up in the sky, in my airship.”
 
“Yes, if you are going, you had better go, and hurry back,” advised Nurse Jane.
 
So the old gentleman rabbit went out in the woodshed where he kept his airship, and after shaking up the sofa cushions in the clothes basket, so they would be soft and fluffy for him to fall on, in case of any accident, Uncle Wiggily blew some hot air into the toy circus balloons that raised his airship from the ground and then, starting the electric fan, that went around whizzie-izzie, up he rose into the air.
 
“Yes, I really think there will be a thunder storm soon,” said the old rabbit to himself, as he looked at the clouds, which were getting more and more black. “I am glad I brought along an[Pg 164] umbrella,” for he had one, you see, in addition to the Japanese sun parasol that was over the top of the red, white and blue toy circus balloons.
 
Well, Uncle Wiggily was sailing around and around, looking for an adventure, when all at once he saw, a little distance away, the spire of a church steeple.
 
“I’ll sail over as far as that steeple,” said the old gentleman rabbit to himself, “and then I’ll go back home. Nurse Jane may get nervous if I stay away too long, with a thunder storm coming up.”
 
Uncle Wiggily was almost at the church steeple, when he saw a big robin red-breast flying through the air. And, just as the bird was near the church spire, there came a strong blast of wind from the storm, dashing poor robin against the hard steeple, which had an arrow on top to tell the way the wind was blowing.
 
“Oh dear!” cried the robin. “My wing is broken and I cannot fly any more, I will fall to the ground, and die!”
 
“Oh, no you will not,” said Uncle Wiggily kindly. “I will catch you on the soft sofa cushions of my airship.” Then the rabbit gentleman sent his airship right under the falling birdie, and caught it just before it struck the ground.
 
“Oh, thank you!” cried robin red-breast.[Pg 165] “You have saved my life, but my wing is broken!”
 
“Never mind. We will have Dr. Possum mend that,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll take you to the animal doctor.” He started off in the airship again, but, before he had gone very far, there was a rumble in the sky. Then came a flash of lightning and a big boom, like that of a Fourth of July cannon. And then it began to rain very hard.
 
“Ha! Here is the thunder storm!” cried Uncle Wiggily, “and I am far from home and Nurse Jane. We had better go down and stay in one of these houses, until the storm is over, Mr. Bird.”
 
“Yes,” said the robin with a broken wing, “I think perhaps we had better do that.”
 
Down went Uncle Wiggily in his airship. It was raining very hard now, and the lightning flashed, and the thunder rolled and rumbled very loudly indeed.
 
“There is a good house near that pond and barn, for us to go in out of the storm!” cried the rabbit gentleman, pointing with one ear down below, for he needed both paws with which to steer. “It is the duck pen where my friends, the Wibblewobbles, live. I’ll go there,” Uncle Wiggily said.
 
[Pg 166]
 
Down went the airship, close to the barn, where Gup, the kind horse lived.
 
“You hurry right into the duck pen!” cried Gup to Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll take your airship in my stable until the storm is over.”
 
So Uncle Wiggily hurried into the duck pen, taking the poor robin with him, and, no sooner was the rabbit gentleman inside, than he heard Lulu and Alice, the duck girls, crying as hard as they could cry.
 
“What is the matter with them?” he asked of Mrs. Wibblewobble.
 
“They are afraid of the thunder storm,” said the duck lady. And Lulu and Alice were lying in a dark room, with pillows over their heads so as not to see the lightning, and hear the thunder. As for Jimmie, the boy duck, of course he was not afraid. Boys, whether they are ducks or not, are never afraid of thunder storms.
 
“You mustn’t mind the thunder storm,” said Uncle Wiggily, to Lulu and Alice. “It will not hurt you. Just pretend that the thunder is only the noise of a big circus wagon going over a bridge, and the lightning is only electric flashes from a trolley car. Then you will not mind it so much.”
 
So Lulu and Alice pretended that way, and the robin with the broken wing sang for them, and[Pg 167] soon the thunder storm was over, and never after that were the duck girls frightened. For whenever it thundered, Lulu would say:
 
“Ha! That is only a circus wagon going over a bridge.”
 
And when it lightened, Alice would say:
 
“That is only a trolley car going up hill.”
 
Then, when the rain had stopped, Uncle Wiggily went sailing on in his airship, taking the poor robin to Dr. Possum, who soon mended the bird’s broken wing.
 
So you see it is sometimes good to have a thunder storm, after all, and in the following story, if the hoptoad in our back yard doesn’t jump over the fence and tickle the pansy’s face, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the trunk.
 
STORY XXVII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE TRUNK

“Are you going to do very much to-day?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, of Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, who was reading the fly paper out on the front porch one morning. He wanted to read the fly paper because it told about how to get rid of biting mosquitoes.
 
“Am I going to do very much?” Uncle Wiggily repeated after Nurse Jane. “Well, I was going out for a little trip in my airship, but if there is anything you would like me to do, why, I can just as well do it as not,” he said, most politely. “I can go airshipping later.”
 
“Then, if you will be so kind,” spoke Nurse Jane, “will you get a trunk for me out of the attic?”
 
“Certainly I’ll do that for you,” Uncle Wiggily promised. “Do you want an elephant’s trunk?” he asked with a funny little twinkle of his nose, “or will you have the trunk of a tree?”
 
[Pg 169]
 
“Oh, there you go! Joking again!” cried Nurse Jane. “What would I do with an elephant’s trunk?”
 
“Why, I didn’t know but what you might be going to give a circus,” said Uncle Wiggily with a laugh, “and they always have an elephant’s trunk in the circus.”
 
“Well, I’m not going to have a circus,” declared Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy. “And what, pray, would I want with the trunk of a tree?”
 
“Why, I thought perhaps you might want to have me split it up for kindling wood, for the fire,” went on Uncle Wiggily, as he stuck the sticky fly paper on the porch screen, so it would not blow away.
 
“Enough of your jokes!” cried Nurse Jane, as she put her long tail up in curl papers, so she would look nice if any one asked her to go to a party. “The trunk I want is an empty one from the attic. I need it to pack away some of your suits, to keep the moths from eating them this summer. Just get down one of the clothes trunks, Wiggy. Put it in your room, and I’ll pack away the things you will not need until next winter.”
 
“Very well, I’ll do that,” the rabbit gentleman said kindly, and then he went up in the attic of the hollow stump bungalow.
 
[Pg 170]
 
The attic was rather a dark and dusty place; and, as it was near the top of the house, where the sun shone on it as hard as it could, it was quite warm up there.
 
“Humph! Yes! Bring down a trunk,” said Uncle Wiggily to himself, looking around. “There are a lot of trunks here. I wonder which one Nurse Jane meant?”
 
He glanced at a pile of several trunks, and finally he decided that the one painted red, white and blue, as was his barber pole rheumatism crutch, would be the best.
 
“I’ll take that trunk down for Nurse Jane,” said Uncle Wiggily, as he lifted it off the pile of others. “My! But it’s heavy!” he exclaimed. “I must see what’s in it.”
 
He opened the trunk and in it the old gentleman rabbit saw a number of play toys he had had when he was a little boy rabbit. There were baseballs and bats, and toy bows and arrows, and fish poles, and pop guns, and many other things.
 
“My! This makes me remember the happy days when I was young!” sighed Uncle Wiggily. “I certainly used to have fun when I was a boy. I’ll just take these things out of my trunk, and save them for Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy, and for Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels. Then I’ll take the empty trunk[Pg 171] down to Nurse Jane. Yes, those were happy days, when I was a young rabbit boy.”
 
The old gentleman rabbit began emptying the trunk, taking out his old play toys, and, when he had the trunk emptied he felt rather tired. It was hot up in the attic, and he felt sleepy, also.
 
“I think I’ll just lie down on the trunk and take a nap,” Uncle Wiggily said. “There is really no hurry about taking it downstairs.”
 
Into the empty trunk he hopped, and for a pillow he took a soft baseball, which had been batted about so much that it was quite mushy.
 
Soon, up in the trunk in the warm attic, Uncle Wiggily was fast asleep.
 
And then something dreadful happened. A big rat, who had had nothing to eat in a long time, crawled out of his hole, looking for a piece of cheese. The rat saw the trunk, with the lid up, and he thought to himself:
 
“Maybe there is cheese in there. I’ll take a look.”
 
He jumped up on the lid of the trunk, and the rat was so heavy that he accidentally slammed the cover down, shutting Uncle Wiggily inside the trunk.
 
“Oh, dear!” cried the rat. “Now I have done it! I’m so sorry!”
 
“And so am I!” cried Uncle Wiggily from[Pg 172] inside the trunk. For the banging down of the lid had awakened him.
 
“Can’t you get out?” asked the rat. “Try to lift up the lid. I’ll help you.”
 
Uncle Wiggily tried, and so did the hungry rat, but the trunk cover had locked itself when it fell down, and Uncle Wiggily could not get out.
 
“Oh, I shall smother in here!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “Help! Help!”
 
“I’ll run downstairs and get the key from Nurse Jane,” the rat said. “Then I can let you out.” But Nurse Jane had gone to the store, and the rat could not find the key. Up to the attic he ran again, saying: “Oh, Uncle Wiggily, what shall I do? I can’t get the trunk key to let you out!”
 
“Oh, dear!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “I must get out! I am smothering in here.”
 
“Ha! I know what I can do!” suddenly cried the rat! “I can gnaw a hole in the trunk, and you can crawl out that way!”
 
So the hungry rat, with his strong teeth, quickly gnawed a hole in the side of the trunk, and Uncle Wiggily hopped out just before he smothered, so it was all right. Then he took the trunk downstairs, mended the rat hole in it and gave the kind rat something to eat, for[Pg 173] the rat had not in the least meant to close down the trunk lid, you see.
 
Then Nurse Jane came back and packed away Uncle Wiggily’s clothes in the moth stuff, and the old rabbit gentleman tied up in bundles the toys he intended giving to the little animal boys, and that’s the end of this story. But, if the ice water pitcher doesn’t go to sleep under the gas stove and make the oven sneeze, when the rice pudding tickles the baked potatoes, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily going to school.
 
STORY XXVIII UNCLE WIGGILY GOES TO SCHOOL

It was a beautiful day in animal land. Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, who was cleaning the mud off his airship (for he had fallen into a puddle the day before) looked up at the blue sky and said:
 
“Ah, it is such a beautiful day that traveling around in my airship will be a delight. I will sail off and perhaps something may happen to me. That will be an adventure.”
 
He kept on cleaning the mud off the clothes basket of his airship, and then he softly fluffed up the sofa cushions that kept him from getting hurt when he fell from the clouds.
 
“Now I am ready to start,” Uncle Wiggily said, as he put a piece of cherry pie in his vest pocket, to have it ready to eat in case he became hungry. I mean he was going to eat the cherry pie, not his vest pocket, you understand.
 
“Where are you going?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, coming to the[Pg 175] door of the hollow stump bungalow, which she kept in order for Uncle Wiggily. “Where are you going?” asked Nurse Jane as she washed and wiped the face of a breakfast plate.
 
“Oh just to take a little trip, and perhaps have an adventure,” Uncle Wiggily said.
 
“Well, please bring home some pickled bananas for breakfast,” went on Nurse Jane, and Uncle Wiggily promised he would.
 
Then he started off in his airship, but he had not gone very far before he saw, down on the ground below him, something red, white and blue, fluttering in the wind.
 
“Ha! I wonder if that can be my red, white and blue striped barber pole rheumatism crutch?” said the rabbit gentleman. “It must have fallen out of my airship.”
 
Then he looked among the sofa cushions and went on:
 
“No, my crutch is here safe and sound. But I wonder what that red, white and blue is down there? I’m going to see.”
 
He steered his airship downward, and when he reached the ground Uncle Wiggily found that what he had seen was a fluttering flag, with red and white stripes, and white stars on a blue square. And the flag was on a pole in front of an animal school house.
 
[Pg 176]
 
“Ha! Of course! I might have known!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Well, since I am so near school, I will go in and see the nice lady mouse teacher and the animal children.”
 
Then he tied his airship to a mulberry bush, so it could not run away, and where it would also have something to eat, and into the school went the rabbit gentleman.
 
“Good morning, children,” said Uncle Wiggily.
 
“Good morning, Uncle Wiggily,” replied the pupils, most politely.
 
“What is going on here?” asked Uncle Wiggily of the lady mouse school teacher, for all the animal children were standing up in a row before her desk. “Have the children not been good?” the rabbit gentleman wanted to know, looking at Charlie Chick and at Johnnie and Billie Bushytail.
 
“Oh, no, indeed! The children are as good as pie!” said the teacher with a laugh.
 
“Ha! Speaking of pie, reminds me that I have some,” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, as he took the cherry piece out of his vest pocket. “If you will kindly allow me I will pass it around,” he went on.
 
“Yes, you may do so,” spoke the teacher. And the piece of cherry pie Uncle Wiggily had[Pg 177] brought with him was so large that there was enough for each animal pupil to have some as well as Uncle Wiggily himself, and also the lady mouse school teacher.
 
“But, tell me, pray, why are your pupils standing in a line this way?” asked the rabbit gentleman, when the pie was all eaten.
 
“We are having an examination,” the teacher replied. “It is nearing the time to close the school for the summer, and I am trying to find out how much my pupils know, so that if they are smart enough they can go to a higher class. We are having an examination, you see.”
 
“An examination in what?” asked Uncle Wiggily.
 
“In spelling,” answered the lady mouse. “Would you like to ask them to spell some words?”
 
“I should be delighted,” went on the rabbit gentleman. Then, looking straight at Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy, Uncle Wiggily said:
 
“Spell me the word carrot!”
 
“C-a-r-r-o-t,” spelled Sammie. He knew that word very well, you see, because he ate carrots every day.
 
“Good!” cried Uncle Wiggily. Then he looked at Billie Bushytail, the squirrel, and said:
 
“Spell me the word peanut!”
 
[Pg 178]
 
“P-e-a-n-u-t,” spelled Billie the first time.
 
“Good!” cried Uncle Wiggily. Then he looked at Charlie, the chicken boy, and said:
 
“Spell me the word corn!”
 
But before Charlie had a chance to do this, all of a sudden into the school jumped a bad old Flippity-flop. A Flippity-flop is an animal, something like a mouse-trap, only it walks on its head instead of on its toes, and it has no tail.
 
“Wow!” cried the bad Flippity-flop. “Here’s where I have some fun!” And that unpleasant creature began to throw pieces of chalk and the blackboard erasers around the room, and he upset the ink bottle on the floor and tickled the lady mouse teacher with a lead pencil point. Oh, the Flippity-flop was very bad, and for no reason at all, except just because he wanted to be so. Flippity-flops are always like that.
 
“Oh, what shall we do?” cried the lady mouse, for the children were all excited. “Call a policeman dog for me, Uncle Wiggily, to take away the bad Flippity-flop!”
 
“Ha! I will make the Flippity-flop go away myself!” cried Uncle Wiggily very bravely.
 
“No you cannot!” shouted the Flippity-flop, as he made a face at the rabbit gentleman. “You cannot make me go away!”
 
“Yes, I can!” said Uncle Wiggily in a very[Pg 179] loud voice. “You spell me the word cheese! quick now! Spell me cheese!”
 
“Oh, wow!” cried the Flippity-flop, and then, as quick as a wink, he turned a somersault and hopped out the window, and ran off to the woods to hide. For if there is one thing more than another that a Flippity-flop is afraid of it is cheese, especially rabbit cheese.
 
And he could no more spell the word than he could fly, and that’s why he ran away, and every one was glad. And I guess you are, too.
 
“Thank you, very much, Uncle Wiggily,” said the lady mouse teacher “for driving away the bad Flippity-flop!” Then the examination went on, and all the animal children passed, and Uncle Wiggily bought some pickled bananas and went on home to Nurse Jane.
 
And next, if the dogwood tree doesn’t bark at the pussy willow and make its tail fluff up, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and Nurse Jane.
STORY XXIX UNCLE WIGGILY AND NURSE JANE

“Well, are you all ready?” asked Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, of Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as he came hurrying into the hollow stump bungalow one afternoon. “Are you all ready, Nurse Jane?”
 
“Ready? Ready for what?” she cried, as she sat down backwards in the dishpan full of soap bubbles, she was so excited.
 
“Why, ready to go to the country, of course,” replied the old gentleman rabbit. “We are going to spend a few days in the woods, and amid the green fields. I thought I told you about it. But perhaps I forgot it. However, no matter. Come, pack your trunk, and we will go off to the country in my airship.”
 
“My goodness me sakes alive, and some molasses lollypops!” cried Nurse Jane. “This is a great surprise to me!”
 
“Is it?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Well, I am[Pg 181] sorry I forgot to tell you about it. But never mind. Pack your trunk and mine, and we will start in the morning.”
 
Then such goings-on as there were in the hollow stump bungalow! Nurse Jane had so much to do to get ready that all Uncle Wiggily had for his supper was some of the hollow rings from the inside of the crullers, and a few of the holes in Swiss cheese, fried in marshmallow sauce.
 
“But I don’t mind,” the rabbit gentleman said. “We will have plenty to eat when we get to the country, Nurse Jane.”
 
“I hope so,” answered the muskrat lady, as she tied her tail up in curl papers to make it nice and frizzy for morning.
 
As soon as the sun had gotten up out of bed next day, and washed its face, Uncle Wiggily and Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy started off for the country in the clothes basket airship, with the red, white and blue toy circus balloons lifting it high above the tree tops.
 
They took with them a trunk and a satchel, containing their clothes, for they were to stay, perhaps, a week or more. And they also had their toothbrushes, for Uncle Wiggily was very particular about cleaning his teeth.
 
“Ah, there is the bungalow where we are to stay,” said the rabbit gentleman, as he sailed[Pg 182] above a pretty place in the woods. “See it down there, Nurse Jane.”
 
He pointed to a little house made of bark. It was close to the edge of a little brook, and all about it grew ferns and bluebell flowers.
 
“Oh, what a lovely place!” cried Nurse Jane. “I know I shall like it there!”
 
Down went the airship as gently as a feather, and out jumped the muskrat lady and Uncle Wiggily.
 
“Now,” said Uncle Wiggily, as he tied his airship fast to a willow-whistle tree, so that it would not run away and play tag with the clouds; “now, Nurse Jane, I’ll cut you some wood to make a fire, and you can get dinner. Then we’ll take a walk in the forest.”
 
“Very well,” said the muskrat lady, and while Uncle Wiggily was gnawing the firewood into little sticks with his strong teeth, Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy opened the box of good things to eat, which they had brought with them in the airship.
 
“I guess I’ll just take a little hop through the woods, while you are getting dinner ready,” said Uncle Wiggily, after a bit. “I may find an adventure.”
 
“Very well,” spoke Nurse Jane, as she put on a pocket handkerchief apron so she would not spatter carrot juice on her shirtwaist.
 
[Pg 183]
 
Well, Uncle Wiggily had not gone very far before, all of a sudden, he heard Nurse Jane crying out:
 
“Help! Help! Help! Oh, Uncle Wiggily, come here quickly!”
 
“My goodness me, sakes alive and some cinnamon ice cream!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “Nurse Jane must be in trouble.”
 
He gave three hops and a skip through the woods, and soon he was at the birch-bark bungalow, near the brook.
 
“What is the matter, Nurse Jane?” he asked, breathless like.
 
“Oh, I heard the most dreadful noise!” she said. “Listen!”
 
Then Uncle Wiggily heard:
 
“Baa! Baa! Baa!”
 
“Ha! Ha!” laughed the rabbit gentleman. “That is only a sheep singing. You will find plenty of them in the country, Nurse Jane.”
 
“Oh! Only a sheep,” said the muskrat lady. “I thought maybe it was an alligator. I am not afraid of a sheep.”
 
Then she went on getting dinner, and Uncle Wiggily went back in the woods, looking for an adventure, and, pretty soon he heard Nurse Jane cry again:
 
[Pg 184]
 
“Oh, Uncle Wiggily! Help! Help! Help! Come quickly!”
 
With three hops, and part of another one, the old rabbit gentleman was back at the birch-bark bungalow.
 
“What is the matter now?” he asked.
 
“Listen,” spoke Nurse Jane, just like a telephone girl.
 
Then Uncle Wiggily heard a noise that went:
 
“Gobble-obble-obble! Gobble-obble-obble!”
 
“What terrible creature is that?” asked Nurse Jane, shivering.
 
“Only a Thanksgiving turkey gobbler,” laughed the old gentleman rabbit. “They are always in the country. Don’t be afraid.”
 
He went back in the woods again, but pretty soon Nurse Jane cried once more.
 
“Oh, Uncle Wiggily! Come here quickly.”
 
“I wonder what can be the matter this time?” thought the old rabbit gentleman, as he gave a hop, skip and a jump back. “What is it, Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy?” he asked, as he came to the birch-bark bungalow.
 
“Oh, we have no milk for dinner,” she said sorrowfully.
 
And, before Uncle Wiggily could answer, there echoed through the woods a sound like:
 
“Moo! Moo! Moo!”
 
[Pg 185]
 
“Oh, what dreadful creature is that?” asked Nurse Jane, wiggling her whiskers. “I am sure it must be a bear.”
 
“Ha!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “That is not a bear! It is our milk for dinner. That is the moo-cow. You will find lots of them in the country. You must not be so nervous, Nurse Jane.”
 
“I’ll try not to be,” she answered, “but it is some time since I have lived in the country. Where is the cow?”
 
Then along came a nice moo-cow with milk for Uncle Wiggily’s dinner, and the rabbit and Nurse Jane had a fine time in the country-woods bungalow, and they thanked the kind cow and Nurse Fuzzy Wuzzy said she would not be afraid of any more funny noises. But you just wait!
 
Now, in the next story, if the circus lemonade doesn’t jump over the elephant’s back, and color the clown’s white suit all over with pink stripes, like a stick of peppermint candy, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the moo-cow.
 
STORY 30 UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE MOO-COW

“Hey, Uncle Wiggily!” suddenly exclaimed Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy in the middle of the night.
 
“Yes, what is it?” asked the rabbit gentleman in a sleepy voice.
 
“Listen!” went on the muskrat lady.
 
So Uncle Wiggily listened, just as if a nice telephone girl had told him to do so. He and Nurse Jane were spending a few days in the country woods bungalow, as I told you in the story before this one. It was their first night, and, about twelve o’clock, the muskrat lady had all at once awakened the old gentleman rabbit by calling to him.
 
“Did you hear that?” asked Nurse Jane, after a bit.
 
Uncle Wiggily heard a sound that went something like: “Chir-r-r-r-r-p! Chir-r-r-r-r-p! Chir-r-r-r-r-p!”
 
“Do you hear that?” asked Nurse Jane in a whisper.
 
“Surely I hear it,” answered Uncle Wiggily.
 
“That is a bad old fox, sawing the bolt off the front door with a screw driver, so he can get in,” went on the muskrat lady.
 
“Nonsencicalness!” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “It is only a black cricket. They always chirp that way, to make the country more cheerful. There are many crickets in the country. Go to sleep, Nurse Jane.”
 
So the muskrat lady went to sleep once more, rather sorry for having awakened Uncle Wiggily. But pretty soon, when it was almost morning, she called out again:
 
“Uncle Wiggily, did you hear that?”
 
“Hear what?” asked the rabbit gentleman, in a sleepy voice.
 
“Some one outside the bungalow is calling about a little girl named Katy. Some one says she did do it, and some one else says she didn’t do it. I’m sure something dreadful must have happened. Listen!”
 
Uncle Wiggily listened. He heard: “Katy-did! Katy-did! Katy-didn’t! Katy-didn’t!”
 
“Hal Ha!” laughed the old rabbit gentleman. “That noise is made by a little green bug, called a ‘Katy-did.’ There are two of them; the[Pg 188] other being called a ‘Katy-didn’t.’ And they are always disputing that way. Go to sleep, Nurse Jane. There are many Katy-dids and didn’ts in the country.”
 
“Then there isn’t any little girl Katy out in the woods?” asked the muskrat lady, curious like.
 
“No, indeed,” answered Uncle Wiggily.
 
So everything was all right until the sun got up out of bed again, and washed his face in the little pond near the birch bark bungalow where Uncle Wiggily and Nurse Jane were staying for a while.
 
All of a sudden there was a rustling in the bushes near the pond, and a voice cried:
 
“Moo! Moo! Moo!”
 
“Ha! I know what that is,” exclaimed Nurse Jane. “That is the Moo-Cow coming with milk for our breakfast.”
 
“Of course,” spoke the rabbit gentleman.
 
“Here I am!” said the cow in a cheerful voice, and after she had given Nurse Jane the morning milk, and the rabbit gentleman had had his breakfast, the Moo-Cow asked:
 
“Uncle Wiggily, what is that funny thing over there? It looks like a clothes basket, filled with sofa cushions, with an electric fan in back, and toy circus balloons and a Japanese umbrella on top. What is it?”
 
[Pg 189]
 
“That is my airship, if you please,” Uncle Wiggily replied, as he tied his long ears in a hard knot so they would not be in his way. “Perhaps you would like to take a ride with me, Moo-Cow.”
 
“I should like it, above all things!” answered the Moo-Cow.
 
“Come then, and I will take you—above all things!” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “We will go even up above the church steeples.”
 
“But don’t fall on any of them, for they are very sharp,” said Nurse Jane. “They are even sharper than the horns of the Moo-Cow.”
 
“We’ll be careful,” promised Uncle Wiggily.
 
So he and the Moo-Cow took their places in the clothes basket of the airship. Uncle Wiggily blew up the balloons with hot air, and then, starting the electric fan, that went around whizzie-izzie, off they sailed over the tree-tops.
 
“Ha! This is fine!” cried the Moo-Cow.
 
“Were you never airshipping before?” inquired Uncle Wiggily, politely.
 
“Never,” answered the Moo-Cow, as she carefully braided the tufted end of her tail, so it would not tickle Uncle Wiggily. “It is very kind of you to ask me for a ride,” she went on.
 
“Pray do not mention such a little thing as that,” spoke the rabbit gentleman still more politely. “I am glad you like it.”
 
[Pg 190]
 
Well, Uncle Wiggily and the Moo-Cow rode on and on in the airship, and Mr. Longears was afraid he was not going to have an adventure that day, when, all of a sudden there came a strong puff of wind. It blew the red, white and blue toy balloons down upon the sharp points of the Moo-Cow’s horns, and, all at once, there was a hiss, like that of a radiator on a cold day, and all the air rushed out of the balloons, leaving them flat like cocoanut cakes. Down went the airship; down—down!
 
“Oh, we are falling!” cried the Moo-Cow. “I am going to jump over the moon! That is the only way I can save myself!”
 
“Stop! Sit still!” cried Uncle Wiggily like a policeman life-saver dog at Asbury Park. “Do not jump over the moon, or anywhere else.”
 
“But we are falling down!” cried the cow. “We shall be hurt when we hit the ground. I must jump before it is too late.”
 
“Stay right in!” said Uncle Wiggily, as he steered the falling airship out of the way of a church steeple. “The soft sofa cushions, filled with Wibblewobble duck feathers, will not let us be hurt. We will fall on them!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “Don’t be in the least afraid. We shall fall on the cushions!”
 
And, surely enough they did. Down they[Pg 191] came on the hard ground, but with the sofa cushions under them it was like falling on a feather bed, so neither the rabbit gentleman nor the Moo-Cow was hurt in the least. The cow was sorry her sharp horns had burst the balloons, but Uncle Wiggily politely said that did not in the least matter.
 
“I can easily mend them again,” he declared. “And maybe I shall have another adventure to-morrow.”
 
He did, and what it was I shall have the pleasure of telling you in the next story—that is if the lawn mower doesn’t run out in the street and cut the wheels off the automobile so the rag doll has to ride in the express wagon. The story will be about Uncle Wiggily and the sheep.
STORY 31 UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE SHEEP

Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, was sweeping and dusting the birch-bark bungalow, in the country woods, where she and Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, were spending a few days’ vacation.
 
“It is very nice here,” thought Nurse Jane, as she put some flowers in the dishpan to make the kitchen table look decorated. “I am glad we came.”
 
And she looked out of the window to see what Mr. Longears was doing. He was pumping some hot air into the red, white and blue circus balloons of his airship. He had mended them after the Moo-Cow’s horns had accidentally punctured holes in them, as I told you last night, if you will kindly remember.
 
“Well, I guess Uncle Wiggily is going for a ride,” said Nurse Jane. “I must ask him to stop at the store for a pound of sugar.”
 
[Pg 193]
 
And then the muskrat lady began singing:
 
Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir! Yes, sir!
Three bags full.
One for the master,
One for the man,
And one for the little boy
Who lives in the lane.
“Ha! Are you singing about me?” asked a voice near a Jack-in-the-pulpit flower which grew at the side porch of the bungalow. “Are you singing about me, Nurse Jane?”
 
“Why, I suppose I was, if you are Baa-Baa Black Sheep,” replied the muskrat lady, while she polished the potatoes for dinner.
 
“Well, I am a white sheep, but my name is Baa-Baa, just the same,” went on the voice, and around the corner came the same sheep that had accidentally frightened Nurse Jane the first night she and Uncle Wiggily had come to the bungalow.
 
“Oh, how do you do?” asked Nurse Jane, for she was not frightened any more, since she knew the sheep was a kind one.
 
[Pg 194]
 
“I am very well,” replied the sheep. “And I have brought you some butter, made from yellow buttercup flowers,” and with that the kind sheep took, from where it was tied to his horns, a nice package of sweet butter, wrapped in cool, green leaves. “My wife made it,” said the sheep. “She is a very good butter maker.”
 
“Oh, that is very kind of her, I am sure. Thank you!” exclaimed Nurse Jane. “Uncle Wiggily,” she called, “see what Mr. Baa-Baa has brought us—some lovely butter.”
 
“Well, I’m sure that is very nice,” spoke the rabbit gentleman, as he finished making his airship ready for a trip. “Would you like to come for a ride with me, Baa-Baa?” asked the rabbit gentleman.
 
“I would if I could be sure we would not fall,” said the sheep gentleman.
 
“Well, even if we do fall we will not get hurt,” Uncle Wiggily answered. “The Moo-Cow and I fell yesterday, but the soft sofa cushions in the clothes basket kept us from getting hurt. However, I do not believe we will fall. You see your horns are nicely rounded and curved and are not sharp like the Moo-Cow’s, though really she did not mean to poke holes in my balloons with them as she did. So, perhaps, you would like to come airshipping with me.”
 
[Pg 195]
 
“I think I would,” the sheep gentleman replied, scratching his ear with his left foot.
 
“Come along then,” invited the rabbit gentleman, as he led the way to his airship.
 
“Oh, wait!” cried Nurse Jane. “I wish you would bring home some sugar Wiggy, and also take these scissors. They are dull and need sharpening. Have the grinder man fix them.”
 
“I will,” promised Uncle Wiggily. Then he and the sheep got into the clothes basket of the airship, sat down on the soft sofa cushions filled with the Wibblewobble duck feathers and away they sailed above the tree tops.
 
“Oh, this is fine,” cried Mr. Baa-Baa, as he looked down at the earth below. “I just love this airshipping!”
 
“I thought you would,” Uncle Wiggily said. “But there is the sugar store just below us and also the scissor-grinder man. We will go down.”
 
Down they went, landing as gently as a feather, for the toy circus balloons were all right now. Uncle Wiggily bought the sugar, had Nurse Jane’s scissors sharpened, and then he and the sheep started off again, sailing above the tree-tops.
 
They had not gone very far before all of a sudden it began to get dark.
 
[Pg 196]
 
“My! Is it going to be night so soon?” asked Uncle Wiggily.
 
“No, but I think there is going to be a thunder storm,” said Mr. Baa-Baa. “See the clouds are over the sun. That is what makes it dark. Yes, we are going to have a storm!”
 
And, surely enough, in a little while, it began to lighten and thunder, and then it began to rain. Oh! So hard.
 
Then it got very cold, and it began to hail, though it was summer time. Down came the big, round, frozen hail stones, pattering on the Japanese umbrella of the airship.
 
“Oh, how cold I am!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I am freezing! My paws are so cold and stiff that I cannot steer the airship. You will have to steer, Mr. Baa-Baa, for I cannot.”
 
“But I do not know how to steer an airship!” cried Mr. Baa-Baa.
 
“Then we are lost!” shouted Uncle Wiggily. “My paws are almost frozen from the hail stones. I cannot hold the steering-wheel any more. Oh, what shall we do?”
 
The airship was wabbling from side to side, and almost turning over, for Uncle Wiggily’s cold paws could no longer steer it properly.
 
“Quick!” cried the sheep. “I know what to do! Take the sharp scissors and cut off some of[Pg 197] my warm wool. Wrap it about your paws, like mittens. That will warm them, and then you can steer us safely to the ground. Shear off my wool.”
 
“But won’t it hurt you?” asked poor, shivering Uncle Wiggily.
 
“Not a bit!” cried Mr. Baa-Baa. “Here, I will cut off some of my wool myself, as your paws are too cold and stiff.” Then, with Nurse Jane’s sharp scissors, the sheep cut off enough of his woolly fleece to make Uncle Wiggily a pair of mittens. With them on, the rabbit’s paws were soon warm enough so that he could steer his airship. And a little later they were safely down on the ground out of the cold hail storm.
 
“My! It is a good thing I took you along in my airship, Mr. Baa-Baa!” said Uncle Wiggily, as he gave Nurse Jane the sugar, and the muskrat lady said the same thing. So you see you should always take a pair of scissors and a woolly sheep along, when you go airshipping in a hail storm.
 
“Well, what are you going to do now?” asked Uncle Wiggily of the sheep gentleman, as Nurse Jane went in the hollow stump bungalow with the sugar.
 
“Why, I think I’ll go back to the farm where I live,” the sheep answered.
 
[Pg 198]
 
“Oh, don’t be in a hurry!” called Nurse Jane from the window. “I was just going to give you and Uncle Wiggily a treat.”
 
“What sort of a treat?” asked the rabbit gentleman.
 
“Ice cream,” answered the muskrat lady.
 
“Ice cream!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “How are you going to make ice cream, if I may ask, Nurse Jane? You have no ice.”
 
“No, but I can use the ice-cold hail stones,” Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy replied. “Scoop up a lot of them for me, Wiggy, that’s a dear, and I’ll make the cream ready to freeze.”
 
So, with the sugar which Uncle Wiggily had brought from the store, Nurse Jane made the cream. Uncle Wiggily and the sheep gentleman scooped up a washtub full of the icy hail stones which had fallen during the thunder storm, and soon the ice cream was frozen.
 
“Ah, this is certainly a lovely treat!” exclaimed the sheep gentleman as he ate a second plate full of the ice cream.
 
“It is, indeed,” agreed Uncle Wiggily.
 
And then the sheep gentleman went back to the farm, and Uncle Wiggily went to sleep while Nurse Jane washed the dishes.
 
Uncle Wiggily slept for a long, long time, and he had a funny dream that he went on a[Pg 199] funny trip in his airship. Oh, it was a very far, long trip, away off to a beautiful land in the country, where the fields were green, and all spotted with daisies and buttercups, and where a little brook sang a song as it bubbled over the mossy stones.
 
And now, as this book is just as full of stories as it will hold I will not put any more in it. But I will make a new book, and it will be called “Uncle Wiggily in the Country.” In that you may read all the funny things that happened to the rabbit gentleman when he rode in his airship over the farm, and fell on a load of hay. And so, until that book is ready, I will just say: “Good-bye!”
 
THE END