"Oh, I wish I could get them off! I wish I could scrub them off with sandpaper, or something like that! I've tried lemon juice and vinegar, but they won't go. And oh, they make me so homely³!"

Uncle Wiggily stopped suddenly and rubbed the end of his pink, twinkling nose with the brim of his tall, silk hat.

"This is very queer," said the bunny uncle to himself. "I wonder what is it she has tried to take off with lemon juice? She seems very unhappy, this little girl does."

The bunny uncle looked through the trees and, seated on a green, mossy stump⁴, he saw a girl about ten or twelve years old. She held a looking-glass in her hand, and as she glanced at her likeness⁵ in the mirror she kept saying:

"How can I get them off? How can I make them disappear so I will be beautiful? Oh, how I hate them!"

"What in the world can be the matter?" thought Uncle Wiggily to himself. For, as I have told you, the bunny gentleman was now able to hear and understand the talk of girls and boys, though he could not himself speak that language.

[Pg 11] He hopped⁶ a little closer to the unhappy girl on the green, mossy stump, but the bunny stepped so softly on the leaf carpet of the forest that scarcely a sound did he make, and the girl with the mirror never heard him.

"I wonder if I said a little verse, such as I have read in fairy books, whether they would go away?" murmured the girl. "I've tried everything but that. I'll do it—I'll say a magical verse! But I must make up one, for I never have read of the kind I want in any book."

She seemed to be thinking deeply for a moment and then, shutting her eyes, and looking up at the sun which was shining through the trees of the wood, the girl recited this little verse:

"Sun, sun, who made them come,

Make them go away.

Then I'll be like other girls,

Happy all the day!"

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