Uncle Wiggily and Mother Goose

There once lived in the woods an old rabbit gentleman named Uncle Wiggily Longears, and in the hollow-stump bungalow where he had his home there also lived Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, a muskrat lady housekeeper. Near Uncle Wiggily there were, in hollow trees, or in nests or in burrows under the ground, many animal friends of his—rabbits, squirrels, puppy dogs, pussy cats, frogs, ducks, chickens and others, so that Uncle Wiggily and Nurse Jane were never lonesome.

Often Sammie or Susie Littletail, a small boy and girl rabbit, would hop over to the hollow-stump bungalow, and call:

“Uncle Wiggily! Uncle Wiggily! Can’t you come out and play with us?”

Then the old rabbit gentleman, who was as fond of fun as a kitten, would put on his tall silk hat, take his red, white and blue-striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch, that Nurse Jane had gnawed for him out of a corn-stalk, and he would go out to play with the rabbit children, about whom I have told you in other books.

Or perhaps Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrel boys, might ask Uncle Wiggily to go after hickory nuts with them, or maybe Lulu, Alice or Jimmie Wibblewobble, the duck children, would want their bunny uncle to see them go swimming.

So, altogether, Uncle Wiggily had a good time in his hollow-stump bungalow which was built in the woods. When he had nothing else to do Mr. Longears would go for a ride in his airship. This was made of a clothes-basket, with toy circus balloons on it to make it rise up above the trees. Or Uncle Wiggily might take a trip in his automobile, which had big bologna sausages on the wheels for tires. And whenever the rabbit gentleman wanted the automobile wheels to go around faster he sprinkled pepper on the sausages.

One day Uncle Wiggily said to Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy:

“I think I will go for a ride in my airship. Is there anything I can bring from the store for you?”

“Why, you might bring a loaf of bread and a pound of sugar,” answered the muskrat lady.

“Very good,” answered Uncle Wiggily, and then he took some soft cushions out to put in the clothes-basket part of his airship, so, in case the air popped out of the balloons, and he fell, he would land easy like, and soft.

Soon the rabbit gentleman was sailing off through the air, over the tree tops, his paws in nice, warm red mittens that Nurse Jane had knitted for him. For it was winter, you see, and Uncle Wiggily’s paws would have been cold steering his airship, by the baby carriage wheel which guided it, had it not been for the mittens.

It did not take the bunny uncle long to go to the store in his airship, and soon, with the loaf of bread and pound of sugar under the seat, away he started for his hollow-stump bungalow again.

And, as he sailed on and over the tree tops, Uncle Wiggily looked far off, and he saw some black smoke rising in the air.

“Ha! That smoke seems to be near my hollow-stump bungalow,” he said to himself. “I guess Nurse Jane is starting a fire in the kitchen stove to get dinner. I must hurry home.”

Uncle Wiggily made his airship go faster, and then he saw, coming toward him, a big bird, with large wings.

“Why, that looks just like my old friend, Grandfather Goosey Gander,” Uncle Wiggily thought to himself. “I wonder why he is flying so high? He hardly ever goes up so near the clouds.”

“And he seems to have some one on his back,” spoke Uncle Wiggily out loud this time, sort of talking to the loaf of bread and the pound of sugar. “A lady, too,” went on the bunny uncle. “A lady with a tall hat on, something like mine, only hers comes to a point on top. And she has a broom with her. I wonder who it can be?”

And when the big white bird came nearer to the airship Uncle Wiggily saw that it was not Grandfather Goosey Gander at all, but another big gander, almost like his friend, whom he often went to see. And then the bunny uncle saw who it was on the bird’s back.

“Why, it’s Mother Goose!” cried Uncle Wiggily Longears. “It’s Mother Goose! She looks just like her pictures in the book, too.”

“Yes, I am Mother Goose,” said the lady who was riding on the back of the big, white gander, spoke Mr. Longears.

“I am glad to meet you, Mother Goose, I have often heard about you. I can see, over the tree tops, that Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, my muskrat lady housekeeper, is getting dinner ready. I can tell by the smoke. Will you not ride home with me? I will make my airship go slowly, so as not to get ahead of you and your fine gander-goose.”

“Alas, Uncle Wiggily,” said Mother Goose, scratching her chin with the end of the broom handle, “I cannot come home to dinner with you much as I would like it. Alas! Alas!”

“Why not?” asked the bunny uncle.

“Because I have bad news for you,” said Mother Goose. “That smoke, which you saw over the tree tops, was not smoke from your chimney as Nurse Jane was getting dinner.”

“What was it then?” asked Uncle Wiggily, and a cold shiver sort of ran up and down between his ears, even if he did have warm, red mittens on his paws. “What was that smoke?”

“The smoke from your burning bungalow,” went on Mother Goose. “It caught fire, when Nurse Jane was getting dinner, and now——”

“Oh! Don’t tell me Nurse Jane is burned!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Don’t say that!”

“I was not going to,” spoke Mother Goose, kindly. “But I must tell you that your hollow-stump bungalow is burned to the ground. There is nothing left but some ashes,” and she made the gander, on whose back she was riding, fly close alongside of Uncle Wiggily’s airship.

“My nice bungalow burned!” exclaimed the rabbit gentleman. “Well, I am very, very sorry for that. But still it might be worse. Nurse Jane might have been hurt, and that would have been quite too bad. I dare say I can get another bungalow.”

“That is what I came to tell you about,” said Mother Goose. “I was riding past when I saw your Woodland hollow-stump house on fire, and I went down to see if I could help. It was too late to save the bungalow, but I said I would find a place for you and Nurse Jane to stay to-night, or as long as you like, until you can build a new home.”

“That is very kind of you,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I hardly know what to do.”

“I have many friends,” went on Mother Goose. “You may have read about them in the book which tells of me. Any of my friends would be glad to have you come and live with them. There is the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe, for instance.”

“But hasn’t she so many children she doesn’t know what to do?” asked Uncle Wiggily, as he remembered the story in the book.

“Yes,” answered Mother Goose, “she has. I suppose you would not like it there.”

“Oh, I like children,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But if there are so many that the dear Old Lady doesn’t know what to do, she wouldn’t know what to do with Nurse Jane and me.”

“Well, you might go stay with my friend Old Mother Hubbard,” said Mother Goose.

“But if I went there, would not the cupboard be bare?” asked Uncle Wiggily, “and what would Nurse Jane and I do for something to eat?”

“That’s so,” spoke Mother Goose, as she reached up quite high and brushed a cobweb off the sky with her broom. “That will not do, either. I must see about getting Mother Hubbard and her dog something to eat. You can stay with her later. Oh, I have it!” suddenly cried the lady who was riding on the back of the white gander, “you can go stay with Old King Cole! He’s a jolly old soul!”

Uncle Wiggily shook his head.

“Thank you very much, Mother Goose,” he said, slowly. “But Old King Cole might send for his fiddlers three, and I do not believe I would like to listen to jolly music to-day when my nice bungalow has just burned down.”

“No, perhaps not,” agreed Mother Goose. “Well, if you can find no other place to stay to-night come with me. I have a big house, and with me live Little Bo Peep, Little Boy Blue, who is getting to be quite a big chap now, Little Tommie Tucker and Jack Sprat and his wife. Oh, I have many other friends living with me, and surely we can find room for you.”

“Thank you,” answered Uncle Wiggily. “I will think about it.”

Then he flew down in his airship to the place where the hollow-stump bungalow had been, but it was not there now. Mother Goose flew down with her gander after Uncle Wiggily. They saw a pile of blackened and smoking wood, and near it stood Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, and many other animals who lived in Woodland with Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, I am so sorry!” cried Nurse Jane. “It is my fault. I was baking a pudding in the oven, Uncle Wiggily. I left it a minute while I ran over to the pen of Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady, to ask her about making a new kind of carrot sauce for the pudding, and when I came home the pudding had burned, and the bungalow was on fire.”

“Never mind,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, kindly, “as long as you were not burned yourself, Nurse Jane.”

“But where will you sleep to-night?” asked the muskrat lady, sorrowfully.

“Oh,” began Uncle Wiggily, “I guess I can——”

“Come stay with us!” cried Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbit children.

“Or with us!” invited Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels.

“And why not with us?” asked Nannie and Billie Wagtail, the goat children.

“We’d ask you to come with us,” said Jollie and Jillie Longtail, the mouse children, “only our house is so small.”

Many of Uncle Wiggily’s friends, who had hurried up to see the hollow-stump bungalow burn, while he was at the store, now, in turn, invited him to stay with them.

“I, myself, have asked him to come with me,” said Mother Goose, “or with any of my friends. We all would be glad to have him.”

“It is very kind of you,” said the rabbit gentleman. “And this is what I will do, until I can build me a new bungalow. I will take turns staying at your different hollow-tree homes, your nests or your burrows underground. And I will come and visit you also, Mother Goose, and all of your friends; at least such of them as have room for me.

“Yes, that is what I’ll do. I’ll visit around now that my hollow-stump home is burned. I thank you all. Come, Nurse Jane, we will pay our first visit to Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbits.”

And while the other animals hopped, skipped or flew away through the woods, and as Mother Goose sailed off on the back of her gander, to sweep more cobwebs out of the sky, Uncle Wiggily and Nurse Jane went to the Littletail burrow, or underground house.

“Good-bye, Uncle Wiggily!” called Mother Goose. “I’ll see you again, soon, sometime. And if ever you meet with any of my friends, Little Jack Horner, Bo Peep, or the three little pigs, about whom you may have read in my book, be kind to them.”

“I will,” promised Uncle Wiggily.

And he did, as you may read in the next chapter, when, if the sugar spoon doesn’t tickle the carving knife and make it dance on the bread board, the story will be about Uncle Wiggily and the first little pig.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old gentleman rabbit, came out of the underground burrow house of the Littletail family, where he was visiting a while with the bunny children, Sammie and Susie, because his own hollow-stump bungalow had burned down.

“Where are you going, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy, as he strapped his cabbage leaf books together, ready to go to school.

“Oh, I am just going for a little walk,” answered Uncle Wiggily. “Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, asked me to get her some court plaster from the five and six-cent store, and on my way there I may have an adventure. Who knows?”

“We are going to school,” said Susie. “Will you walk part of the way with us, Uncle Wiggily?”

“To be sure I will!” crowed the old gentleman rabbit, making believe he was Mr. Cock A. Doodle, the rooster.

So Uncle Wiggily, with Sammie and Susie, started off across the snow-covered fields and through the woods. Pretty soon they came to the path the rabbit children must take to go to the hollow-stump school, where the lady mouse teacher would hear their carrot and turnip gnawing lessons.

“Good-by, Uncle Wiggily!” called Sammie and Susie. “We hope you have a nice adventure.”

“Good-by. Thank you, I hope I do,” he answered.

Then the rabbit gentleman walked on, while Sammie and Susie hurried to school, and pretty soon Mr. Longears heard a queer grunting noise behind some bushes near him.

“Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!” came the sound.

“Hello! Who is there?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“Why, if you please, I am here, and I am the first little pig,” came the answer, and out from behind the bush stepped a cute little piggie boy, with a bundle of straw under his paw.

“So you are the first little pig, eh?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “How many of you are there altogether?”

“Three, if you please,” grunted the first little pig. “I have two brothers, and they are the second and third little pigs. Don’t you remember reading about us in the Mother Goose book?”

“Oh, of course I do!” cried Uncle Wiggily, twinkling his nose. “And so you are the first little pig. But what are you going to do with that bundle of straw?”

“I’m going to build me a house, Uncle Wiggily, of course,” grunted the piggie boy. “Don’t you remember what it says in the book? ‘Once upon a time there were three little pigs, named Grunter, Squeaker and Twisty-Tail.’ Well, I’m Grunter, and I met a man with a load of straw, and I asked him for a bundle to make me a house. He very kindly gave it to me, and now, I’m off to build it.”

“May I come?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll help you put up your house.”

“Of course you may come—glad to have you,” answered the first little pig. “Only you know what happens to me; don’t you?”

“No! What?” asked the rabbit gentleman. “I guess I have forgotten the story.”

“Well, after I build my house of straw, just as it says in the Mother Goose story book, along comes a bad old wolf, and he blows it down,” said the first little pig.

“Oh, how dreadful!” cried Uncle Wiggily, “but maybe he won’t come to-day.”

“Oh, yes, he will,” said the first little pig. “It’s that way in the book, and the wolf has to come.”

“Well, if he does,” said Uncle Wiggily, “maybe I can save you from him.”

“Oh, I hope you can!” grunted Grunter. “It is no fun to be chased by a wolf.”

So the rabbit gentleman and the piggie boy went on and on, until they came to the place where Grunter was to build his house of straw. Uncle Wiggily helped, and soon it was finished.

“Why, it is real nice and cozy in here,” said Uncle Wiggily, when he had made a big pile of snow back of the straw house to keep off the north wind, and had gone in with the little piggie boy.

“Yes, it is cozy enough,” spoke Grunter, “but wait until the bad wolf comes. Oh, dear!”

“Maybe he won’t come,” said the rabbit, hopeful like.

“Yes, he will!” cried Grunter. “Here he comes now.”

And, surely enough, looking out of the window, the piggie boy and Uncle Wiggily saw a bad wolf running over the snow toward them. The wolf knocked on the door of the straw house and cried:

“Little pig! Little pig! Let me come in.”

“No! No! By the hair of my chinny-chin-chin. I will not let you in!” answered Grunter, just like in the book.

“Then I’ll puff and I’ll blow, and I’ll blow your house in!” howled the wolf. Then he puffed and he blew, and, all of a sudden, over went the straw house. But, just as it was falling down, Uncle Wiggily cried:

“Quick, Grunter, come with me! I’ll dig a hole for us in the pile of snow that I made back of your house and in there we’ll hide where the wolf can’t find us!” Then the rabbit gentleman, with his strong paws, just made for digging, burrowed a hole in the snow-bank, and as the straw house toppled down, into this hole he crawled with Grunter.

“Now I’ve got you!” cried the wolf, as he blew down the first little pig’s straw house. But when the wolf looked he couldn’t see Grunter or Uncle Wiggily at all, because they were hiding in the snow-bank.

“Well, well!” howled the wolf. “This isn’t like the book at all! Where is that little pig?”

But the wolf could not find Grunter, and soon the bad creature went away, fearing to catch cold in his eyes. Then Uncle Wiggily and Grunter came out of the snow-bank and were safe, and Uncle Wiggily took Grunter home to the rabbit house to stay until Mother Goose came, some time afterward, to get the first little pig boy.

“Thank you very much, Uncle Wiggily,” said Mother Goose, “for being kind to one of my friends.”

“Pray don’t mention it. I had a fine adventure, besides saving a little pig,” said the rabbit gentleman. “I wonder what will happen to me to-morrow?”

And we shall soon see for, if the snowball doesn’t wrap itself up in the parlor rug to hide away from the jam tart, when it comes home from the moving pictures, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the second little pig.

“There! It’s all done!” exclaimed Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the nice muskrat lady housekeeper, who, with Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, was staying in the Littletail rabbit house, since the hollow-stump bungalow had burned down.

“What’s all done?” asked Uncle Wiggily, looking over the tops of his spectacles.

“These jam tarts I baked for Billie and Nannie Wagtail, the goat children,” said Nurse Jane. “Will you take them with you when you go out for a walk, Uncle Wiggily, and leave them at the goat house?”

“I most certainly will,” said the rabbit gentleman, very politely. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Nurse Jane?”

But the muskrat lady wanted nothing more, and, wrapping up the jam tarts in a napkin so they would not catch cold, she gave them to Mr. Longears to take to the two goat children.

Uncle Wiggily was walking along, wondering what sort of an adventure he would have that day, or whether he would meet Mother Goose again, when all at once he heard a voice speaking from behind some bushes.

“Yes, I think I will build my house here,” the voice said. “The wolf is sure to find me anyhow, and I might as well have it over with. I’ll make my house here.”

Uncle Wiggily looked over the bushes, and there he saw a funny little animal boy, with some pieces of wood on his shoulder.

“Hello!” cried Uncle Wiggily, making his nose twinkle in a most jilly-jolly way. “Who are you, and what are you going to do?”

“Why, I am Squeaker, the second little pig, and I am going to make a house of wood,” was the answer. “Don’t you remember how it reads in the Mother Goose book? ‘Once upon a time there were three little pigs, named Grunter, Squeaker and——’”

“Oh, yes, I remember!” Uncle Wiggily said. “I met your brother Grunter yesterday, and helped him build his straw house.”

“That was kind of you,” spoke Squeaker. “I suppose the bad old wolf got him, though. Too bad! Well, it can’t be helped, as it is that way in the book.”

Uncle Wiggily didn’t say anything about having saved Grunter, for he wanted to surprise Squeaker, so the rabbit gentleman just twinkled his nose again and asked:

“May I have the pleasure of helping you build your house of wood?”

“Indeed you may, thank you,” said Squeaker. “I suppose the old wolf will be along soon, so we had better hurry to get the house finished.”

Then the second little pig and Uncle Wiggily built the wooden house. When it was almost finished Uncle Wiggily went out near the back door, and began piling up some cakes of ice to make a sort of box.

“What are you doing?” asked Squeaker.

“Oh, I’m just making a place where I can put these jam tarts I have for Nannie and Billie Wagtail,” the rabbit gentleman answered. “I don’t want the wolf to get them when he blows down your house.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Squeaker. “I rather wish, now, he didn’t have to blow over my nice wooden house, and get me. But he has to, I s’pose, ’cause it’s in the book.”

Still, Uncle Wiggily didn’t say anything, but he just sort of blinked his eyes and twinkled his pink nose, until, all of a sudden, Squeaker looked across the snowy fields, and he cried:

“Here comes the bad old wolf now!”

And, surely enough, along came the growling, howling creature. He ran up to the second little pig’s wooden house, and, rapping on the door with his paw, cried:

“Little pig! Little pig! Let me come in!”

“No, no! By the hair on my chinny-chin-chin I will not let you in,” said the second little pig, bravely.

“Then I’ll puff and I’ll blow, and I’ll puff and I’ll blow, and blow your house in!” howled the wolf.

Then he puffed out his cheeks, and he took a long breath and he blew with all his might and main and suddenly:

“Cracko!”

Down went the wooden house of the second little piggie, and only that Uncle Wiggily and Squeaker jumped to one side they would have been squashed as flat as a pancake, or even two pancakes.

“Quick!” cried the rabbit gentleman in the piggie boy’s ear. “This way! Come with me!”

“Where are we going?” asked Squeaker, as he followed the rabbit gentleman over the cracked and broken boards, which were all that was left of the house.

“We are going to the little cabin that I made out of cakes of ice, behind your wooden house,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I put the jam tarts in it, but there is also room for us, and we can hide there until the bad wolf goes off.”

“Well, that isn’t the way it is in the book,” said the second little pig. “But——”

“No matter!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Hurry!” So he and Squeaker hid in the ice cabin back of the blown-down house, and when the bad wolf came poking along among the broken boards, to get the little pig, he couldn’t find him. For Uncle Wiggily had closed the door of the ice place, and as it was partly covered with snow the wolf could not see through.

“Oh, dear!” howled the wolf. “That’s twice I’ve been fooled by those pigs! It isn’t like the book at all. I wonder where he can have gone?”

But he could not find Squeaker or Uncle Wiggily either, and finally the wolf’s nose became so cold from sniffing the ice that he had to go home to warm it, and so Uncle Wiggily and Squeaker were safe.

“Oh, I don’t know how to thank you,” said the second little piggie boy as the rabbit gentleman took him home to Mother Goose, after having left the jam tarts at the home of the Wagtail goats.

“Pray do not mention it,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, modest like, and shy. “It was just an adventure for me.”

He had another adventure the following day, Uncle Wiggily did. And if the dusting brush doesn’t go swimming in the soap dish, and get all lather so that it looks like a marshmallow cocoanut cake, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the third little pig.

Uncle Wiggily Longears sat in the burrow, or house under the ground, where he and Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, lived with the Littletail family of rabbits since the hollow-stump bungalow had burned.

“Oh, dear!” sounded a grunting, woofing sort of voice over near one window.

“Oh, dear!” squealed another voice from under the table.

“Well, well! What is the matter with you two piggie boys?” asked Uncle Wiggily, as he took down from the sideboard his red, white and blue barber-pole striped rheumatism crutch that Nurse Jane had gnawed for him out of a corn-stalk.

“What’s the trouble, Grunter and Squeaker?” asked the rabbit gentleman.

“We are lonesome for our brother,” said the two little piggie boys No. 1 and No. 2. “We want to see Twisty-Tail.”

For the first and second little pigs, after having been saved by Uncle Wiggily, and taken home to Mother Goose, had come back to pay a visit to the bunny gentleman.

“Well, perhaps I may meet Twisty-Tail when I go walking to-day,” spoke Uncle Wiggily. “If I do I’ll bring him home with me.”

“Oh, goodie!” cried Grunter and Squeaker. For they were the first and second little pigs, you see. Uncle Wiggily had saved Grunter from the bad wolf when the growling creature blew down Grunter’s straw house. And, in almost the same way, the bunny uncle had saved Squeaker, when his wooden house was blown over by the wolf. But Twisty-Tail, the third little pig, Uncle Wiggily had not yet helped.

“I’ll look for Twisty-Tail to-day,” said the rabbit gentleman as he started off for his adventure walk, which he took every afternoon and morning.

On and on went Uncle Wiggily Longears over the snow-covered fields and through the wood, until just as he was turning around the corner near an old red stump, the rabbit gentleman heard a clinkity-clankity sort of a noise, and the sound of whistling.

“Ha! Some one is happy!” thought the bunny uncle. “That’s a good sign—whistling. I wonder who it is?”

He looked around the stump corner and he saw a little animal chap, with blue rompers on, and a fur cap stuck back of his left ear, and this little animal chap was whistling away as merrily as a butterfly eating butterscotch candy.

“Why, that must be the third little pig!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “Hello!” called the rabbit gentleman. “Are you Twisty-Tail?”

“That’s my name,” answered the little pig, “and, as you see, I am building my house of bricks, just as it tells about in the Mother Goose book.”

And, surely enough, Twisty-Tail was building a little house of red bricks, and it was the tap-tap-tapping of his trowel, or mortar-shovel, that made the clinkity-clankity noise.

“Do you know me, Uncle Wiggily?” asked the piggie boy. “You see I am in a book. ‘Once upon a time there were three little pigs, and——’”

“I know all about you,” interrupted Uncle Wiggily. “I have met Mother Goose, and also your two brothers.”

“They didn’t know how to build the right kind of houses, and so the wolf got them,” said Twisty-Tail. “I am sorry, but it had to happen that way, just as it is in the book.”

Uncle Wiggily smiled, but said nothing.

“I met a man with a load of bricks, and I begged some of them to build my house,” said Twisty-Tail. “No wolf can get me. No, sir-ee! I’ll build my house very strong, not weak like my brothers’. No, indeed!”

“I’ll help you build your house,” offered Uncle Wiggily, kindly, and just as he and Twisty-Tail finished the brick house and put on the roof it began to rain and freeze.

“We are through just in time,” said Twisty-Tail, as he and the rabbit gentleman hurried inside. “I don’t believe the wolf will come out in such weather.”

But just as he said that and looked from the window, the little piggie boy gave a cry, and said:

“Oh, here comes the bad animal now! But he can’t get in my house, or blow it over, ’cause the book says he didn’t.”

The wolf came up through the freezing rain and knocking on the third piggie boy’s brick house, said:

“Little pig! Little pig! Let me come in!”

“No! No! By the hair of my chinny-chin-chin, I will not let you in!” grunted Twisty-Tail.

“Then I’ll puff and I’ll blow, and I’ll blow your house in!” howled the wolf.

“You can’t! The book says so!” laughed the little pig. “My house is a strong, brick one. You can’t get me!”

“Just you wait!” growled the wolf. So he puffed out his cheeks, and he blew and he blew, but he could not blow down the brick house, because it was so strong.

“Well, I’m in no hurry,” the wolf said. “I’ll sit down and wait for you to come out.”

So the wolf sat down on his tail to wait outside the brick house. After a while Twisty-Tail began to get hungry.

“Did you bring anything to eat, Uncle Wiggily?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t,” answered the rabbit gentleman. “But if the old wolf would go away I’d take you where your two brothers are visiting with me in the Littletail family rabbit house and you could have all you want to eat.”

But the wolf would not go away, even when Uncle Wiggily asked him to, most politely, making a bow and twinkling his nose.

“I’m going to stay here all night,” the wolf growled. “I am not going away. I am going to get that third little pig!”

“Are you? Well, we’ll see about that!” cried the rabbit gentleman. Then he took a rib out of his umbrella, and with a piece of his shoe lace (that he didn’t need) for a string he made a bow like the Indians used to have.

“If I only had an arrow now I could shoot it from my umbrella-bow, hit the wolf on the nose and make him go away,” said Uncle Wiggily. Then he looked out of the window and saw where the rain, dripping from the roof, had frozen into long, sharp icicles.

“Ha!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “An icicle will make the best kind of an arrow! Now I’ll shoot the wolf, not hard enough to hurt him, but just hard enough to make him run away.”

Reaching out the window Uncle Wiggily broke off a sharp icicle. He put this ice arrow in his bow and, pulling back the shoe string, “twang!” he shot the wolf on the nose.

“Oh, wow! Oh, double-wow! Oh, custard cake!” howled the wolf. “This isn’t in the Mother Goose book at all. Not a single pig did I get! Oh, my nose! Ouch!”

Then he ran away, and Uncle Wiggily and Twisty-Tail could come safely out of the brick house, which they did, hurrying home to the bunny house where Grunter and Squeaker were, to get something to eat. So everything came out right, you see, and Uncle Wiggily saved the three little pigs, one after the other.

And if the canary bird doesn’t go swimming in the rice pudding, and eat out all the raisin seeds, so none is left for the parrot, I’ll tell you next of Uncle Wiggily and Little Boy Blue.

“Uncle Wiggily, are you very busy to-day?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, who, with the old rabbit gentleman, was on a visit to the Bushytail family of squirrels in their hollow-tree home.

After staying a while with the Littletail rabbits, when his hollow-stump bungalow had burned down, the bunny uncle went to visit Johnnie and Billie Bushytail.

“Are you very busy, Uncle Wiggily?” asked the muskrat lady.

“Why, no, Nurse Jane, not so very,” answered the bunny uncle. “Is there something you would like me to do for you?” he asked, with a polite bow.

“Well, Mrs. Bushytail and I have just baked some pies,” said the muskrat lady, “and we thought perhaps you might like to take one to your friend, Grandfather Goosey Gander.” “Fine!” cried Uncle Wiggily, making his nose twinkle like a star on a Christmas tree in the dark. “Grandpa Goosey will be glad to get a pie. I’ll take him one.”

“We have it all ready for you,” said Mrs. Bushytail, the squirrel mother of Johnnie and Billie, as she came in the sitting-room. “It’s a nice hot pie, and it will keep your paws warm, Uncle Wiggily, as you go over the ice and snow through the woods and across the fields.”

“Fine!” cried the bunny uncle again. “I’ll get ready and go at once.”

Uncle Wiggily put on his warm fur coat, fastened his tall silk hat on his head, with his ears sticking up through holes cut in the brim, so it would not blow off, and then, taking his red, white and blue-striped rheumatism crutch, that Nurse Jane had gnawed for him out of a corn-stalk, away he started. He carried the hot apple pie in a basket over his paw.

“Grandpa Goosey will surely like this pie,” said Uncle Wiggily to himself, as he lifted the napkin that was over it to take a little sniff. “It makes me hungry myself. And how nice and warm it is,” he went on, as he put one cold paw in the basket to warm it; warm his paw I mean, not the basket.

Over the fields and through the woods hopped the bunny uncle. It began to snow a little, but Uncle Wiggily did not mind that, for he was well wrapped up.

When he was about halfway to Grandpa Goosey’s house Uncle Wiggily heard, from behind a pile of snow, a sad sort of crying voice.

“Hello!” exclaimed the bunny uncle, “that sounds like some one in trouble. I must see if I can help them.”

Uncle Wiggily looked over the top of the pile of snow, and, sitting on the ground, in front of a big icicle, was a boy all dressed in blue. Even his eyes were blue, but you could not very well see them, as they were filled with tears.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “This is quite too bad! What is the matter, little fellow; and who are you?”

“I am Little Boy Blue, from the home of Mother Goose,” was the answer, “and the matter is that it’s lost!”

“What is lost?” asked Uncle. “If it’s a penny I will help you find it.”

“It isn’t a penny,” answered Boy Blue. “It’s the hay stack which I have to sleep under. I can’t find it, and I must see where it is or else things won’t be as they are in the Mother Goose book. Don’t you know what it says?”

And he sang:

“Only I can’t go to sleep under the hay stack, Uncle Wiggily, because I can’t find it. And, oh, dear! I don’t know what to do!” and Little Boy Blue cried harder than ever, so that some of his tears froze into little round marbles of ice, like hail stones.

“There, there, now!” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “Of course you can’t find a hay stack in the winter. They are all covered with snow.”

“Are they?” asked Boy Blue, real surprised like.

“Of course, they are!” cried Uncle Wiggily, in his most jolly voice. “Besides, you wouldn’t want to sleep under a hay stack, even if there was one here, in the winter. You would catch cold and have the sniffle-snuffles.”

“That’s so, I might,” Boy Blue said, and he did not cry so hard now. “But that isn’t all, Uncle Wiggily,” he went on, nodding at the rabbit gentleman. “It isn’t all my trouble.”

“What else is the matter?” asked the bunny uncle.

“It’s my horn,” spoke the little boy who looked after the cows and sheep. “I can’t make any music tunes on my horn. And I really have to blow my horn, you know, for it says in the Mother Goose book that I must. See, I can’t blow it a bit.” And Boy Blue put his horn to his lips, puffed out his cheeks and blew as hard as he could, but no sound came out.

“Let me try,” said Uncle Wiggily. The rabbit gentleman took the horn and he, also, tried to blow. He blew so hard he almost blew off his tall silk hat, but no sound came from the horn.

“Ah, I see what the trouble is!” cried the bunny uncle with a jolly laugh, looking down inside the “toot-tooter.” “It is so cold that the tunes are all frozen solid in your horn. But I have a hot apple pie here in my basket that I was taking to Grandpa Goosey Gander. I’ll hold the cold horn on the hot pie and the tunes will thaw out.”

“Oh, have you a pie in there?” asked Little Boy Blue. “Is it the Christmas pie into which Little Jack Horner put in his thumb and pulled out a plum?”

“Not quite, but nearly the same,” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “Now to thaw out the frozen horn.”

The bunny uncle put Little Boy Blue’s horn in the basket with the hot apple pie. Soon the ice was melted out of the horn, and Uncle Wiggily could blow on it, and play tunes, and so could Boy Blue. Tootity-toot-toot tunes they both played.

“Now you are all right!” cried the bunny uncle. “Come along with me and you may have a piece of this pie for yourself. And you may stay with Grandpa Goosey Gander until summer comes, and then blow your horn for the sheep in the meadow and the cows in the corn. There is no need, now, for you to stay out in the cold and look for a haystack under which to sleep.”

“No, I guess not,” said Boy Blue. “I’ll come with you, Uncle Wiggily. And thank you, so much, for helping me. I don’t know what would have happened only for you.”

“Pray do not mention it,” politely said Uncle Wiggily with a laugh. Then he and little Boy Blue hurried on through the snow, and soon they were at Grandpa Goosey’s house with the warm apple pie, and oh! how good it tasted! Oh, yum-yum!

And if the church steeple doesn’t drop the ding-dong bell down in the pulpit and scare the organ, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Higgledee Piggledee.

One day Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old gentleman rabbit, was sitting in an easy chair in the hollow-stump house of the Bushytail squirrel family, where he was paying a visit to Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the two squirrel boys.

There came a knock on the door, but the bunny uncle did not pay much attention to it, as he was sort of taking a little sleep after his dinner of cabbage soup with carrot ice cream on top.

Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, went out in the hall, and when she came back, with her tail all tied up in a pink ribbon, (for she was sweeping) she said:

“Uncle Wiggily, a friend of yours has come to see you.”

“A friend of mine!” cried Uncle Wiggily, awakening so suddenly that his nose stopped twinkling. “I hope it isn’t the bad old fox from the Orange Mountains.”

“No,” answered Nurse Jane with a smile, “it is a lady.”

“A lady?” exclaimed the old rabbit gentleman, getting up quickly, and looking in the glass to see that his ears were not criss-crossed. “Who can it be?”

“It is Mother Goose,” went on Nurse Jane. “She says you were so kind as to help Little Boy Blue the other day, when his horn was frozen, and you thawed it on the warm pie, that perhaps you will now help her. She is in trouble.”

“In trouble, eh?” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, sort of smoothing down his vest, fastidious like and stylish. “I didn’t know she blew a horn.”

“She doesn’t,” said Nurse Jane. “But I’ll bring her in and she can tell you, herself, what she wants.”

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” cried Mother Goose, as she set her broom down in one corner, for she never went out unless she carried it with her. She said she never could tell when she might have to sweep the cobwebs out of the sky. “Oh, Uncle Wiggily, I am in such a lot of trouble!”

“Well, I will be very glad to help you if I can,” said the bunny uncle. “What is it?”

“It’s about Higgledee Piggledee,” answered Mother Goose.

“Higgledee Piggledee!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, “why that sounds like——”

“She’s my black hen,” went on Mother Goose. “You know how the verse goes in the book about me and my friends.”

And, taking off her tall peaked hat, which she wore when she rode on the back of the old gander, Mother Goose sang:

“Well,” asked Uncle Wiggily, “what is the trouble? Has Higgledee Piggledee stopped laying? If she has I am afraid I can’t help you, for hens don’t lay many eggs in winter, you know.”

“Oh, it isn’t that!” said Mother Goose, quickly. “Higgledee Piggledee lays as many eggs as ever for gentlemen—sometimes nine and sometimes ten. But the trouble is the gentlemen don’t get them.”

“Don’t they come for them?” asked Uncle Wiggily, sort of puzzled like and wondering.

“Oh, yes, they come every day,” said Mother Goose, “but there are no eggs for them. Some one else is getting the eggs Higgledee Piggledee lays.”

“Do you s’pose she eats them herself?” asked the old rabbit gentleman, in a whisper. “Hens sometimes do, you know.”

“Not Higgledee Piggledee,” quickly spoke Mother Goose. “She is too good to do that. She and I are both worried about the missing eggs, and as you have been so kind I thought perhaps you could help us.”

“I’ll try,” Uncle Wiggily said.

“Then come right along to Higgledee Piggledee’s coop,” invited Mother Goose. “Maybe you can find out where her eggs go to. She lays them in her nest, comes off, once in a while, to get something to eat, but when she goes back to lay more eggs the first ones are gone.”

Uncle Wiggily twinkled his nose, tied his ears in a hard knot, as he always did when he was thinking, and then, putting on his fur coat and taking his rheumatism crutch with him, he went out with Mother Goose.

Uncle Wiggily rode in his airship, made of a clothes-basket, with toy circus balloons on top, and Mother Goose rode on the back of a big gander, who was a brother to Grandfather Goosey Gander. Soon they were at the hen coop where Higgledee Piggledee lived.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily, I am so glad you came!” cackled the black hen. “Did Mother Goose tell you about the egg trouble?”

“She did, Higgledee Piggledee, and I will see if I can stop it. Now, you go on the nest and lay some eggs and then we will see what happens,” spoke Uncle Wiggily.

So Higgledee Piggledee, the black hen, laid some eggs for gentlemen, and then she went out in the yard to get some corn to eat, just as she always did. And, while she was gone, Uncle Wiggily hid himself in some straw in the hen coop. Pretty soon the old gentleman heard a gnawing, rustling sound and up out of a hole in the ground popped two big rats, with red eyes.

“Did Higgledee Piggledee lay any eggs to-day?” asked one rat, in a whisper.

“Yes,” spoke the other, “she did.”

“Then we will take them,” said the first rat. “Hurray! More eggs for us! No gentlemen will get these eggs because we’ll take them ourselves. Hurray!”

He got down on his back, with his paws sticking up in the air. Then the other rat rolled one of the black hen’s eggs over so the first rat could hold it in among his four legs. Next, the second rat took hold of the first rat’s tail and began pulling him along, egg and all, just as if he were a sled on a slippery hill, the rat sliding on his back over the smooth straw. And the eggs rode on the rat-sled as nicely as you please.

“Ha!” cried Uncle Wiggily, jumping suddenly out of his hiding-place. “So this is where Higgledee Piggledee’s eggs have been going, eh? You rats have been taking them. Scatt! Shoo! Boo! Skedaddle! Scoot!”

And the rats were so scared that they skedaddled away and shooed themselves and did everything else Mr. Longears told them to do, and they took no eggs that day. Then Uncle Wiggily showed Mother Goose the rat hole, and it was stopped up with stones so the rats could not come in the coop again. And ever after that Higgledee Piggledee, the black hen, could lay eggs for gentlemen, sometimes nine and sometimes ten, and there was no more trouble as there had been before Uncle Wiggily caught the rats and made them skedaddle.

So Mother Goose and the black hen thanked Uncle Wiggily very much. And if the stylish lady who lives next door doesn’t take our feather bed to wear on her hat when she goes to the moving pictures, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Little Bo Peep.

“What are you going to do, Nurse Jane?” asked Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, as he saw the muskrat lady housekeeper going out in the kitchen one morning, with an apron on, and a dab of white flour on the end of her nose.

“I am going to make a chocolate cake with carrot icing on top,” replied Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy.

“Oh, good!” cried Uncle Wiggily, and almost before he knew it he started to clap his paws, just as Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbit children, might have done, and as they often did do when they were pleased about anything. “I just love chocolate cake!” cried the bunny uncle, who was almost like a boy-bunny himself.

“Do you?” asked Nurse Jane. “Then I am glad I am going to make one,” and, going into the kitchen of the hollow-stump bungalow, she began rattling away among the pots, pans and kettles.

For now Nurse Jane and Uncle Wiggily were living together once more in their own hollow-stump bungalow. It had burned down, you remember, but Uncle Wiggily had had it built up again, and now he did not have to visit around among his animal friends, though he still called on them every now and then.

“Oh, dear!” suddenly cried Nurse Jane from the kitchen. “Oh, dear!”

“What is the matter, Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy?” asked the bunny uncle. “Did you drop a pan on your paw?”

“No, Uncle Wiggily,” answered the muskrat lady. “It is worse than that. I can’t make the chocolate cake after all, I am sorry to say.”

“Oh, dear! That is too bad! Why not?” asked the bunny uncle, in a sad and sorrowful voice.

“Because there is no chocolate,” went on Nurse Jane. “Since we came to our new hollow-stump bungalow I have not made any cakes, and to-day I forgot to order the chocolate from the store for this one.”

“Never mind,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “I’ll go to the store and get the chocolate for you. In fact, I would go to two stores and part of another one for the sake of having a chocolate cake.”

“All right,” spoke Nurse Jane. “If you get me the chocolate I’ll make one.”

Putting on his overcoat, with his tall silk hat tied down over his ears so they would not blow away—I mean so his hat would not blow off—and with his rheumatism crutch under his paw, off started the old gentleman rabbit, across the fields and through the woods to the chocolate store.

After buying what he wanted for Nurse Jane’s cake, the old gentleman rabbit started back for the hollow-stump bungalow. On the way, he passed a toy store, and he stopped to look in the window at the pop-guns, the spinning-tops, the dolls, the Noah’s Arks, with the animals marching out of them, and all things like that.

“It makes me young again to look at toys,” said the bunny uncle. Then he went on a little farther until, all at once, as he was passing a bush, he heard from behind it the sound of crying.

“Ha! Some one in trouble again,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I wonder if it can be Little Boy Blue?” He looked, but, instead of seeing the sheep-boy, whom he had once helped, Uncle Wiggily saw a little girl.

“Ha! Who are you?” the bunny uncle asked, “and what is the matter?”

“I am Little Bo Peep,” was the answer, “and I have lost my sheep, and don’t know where to find them.”

“Why, let them alone, and they’ll come home, wagging their tails behind them,” said Uncle Wiggily quickly, and he laughed jolly like and happy, because he had made a rhyme to go with what Bo Peep said.

“Yes, I know that’s the way it is in the Mother Goose book,” said Little Bo Peep, “but I’ve waited and waited, and let them alone ever so long, but they haven’t come home. And now I’m afraid they’ll freeze.”

“Ha! That’s so. It is pretty cold for sheep to be out,” said Uncle Wiggily, as he looked across the snow-covered field, and toward the woods where there were icicles hanging down from the trees.

“Look here, Little Bo Peep,” went on the bunny uncle. “I think your sheep must have gone home long ago, wagging their tails behind them. And you, too, had better run home to Mother Goose. Tell her you met me and that I sent you home. And, if I find your sheep, I’ll send them along, too. So don’t worry.”

“Oh, but I don’t like to go home without my sheep,” said Bo Peep, and tears came into her eyes. “I ought to bring them with me. But to-day I went skating on Crystal Lake, up in the Lemon-Orange Mountains, and I forgot all about my sheep. Now I am afraid to go home without them. Oh, dear!”

Uncle Wiggily thought for a minute, then he said:

“Ha! I have it! I know where I can get you some sheep to take home with you. Then Mother Goose will say it is all right. Come with me.”

“Where are you going?” asked Bo Peep.

“To get you some sheep.” And Uncle Wiggily led the little shepherdess girl back to the toy store, in the window of which he had stopped to look a while ago.

“Give Bo Peep some of your toy woolly sheep, if you please,” said Uncle Wiggily to the toy-store man. “She can take them home with her, while her own sheep are safe in some warm place, I’m sure. But now she must have some sort of sheep to take home with her in place of the lost ones, so it will come out all right, as it is in the book. And these toy woolly sheep will do as well as any; won’t they, Little Bo Peep?”

“Oh, yes, they will; thank you very much, Uncle Wiggily,” answered Bo Peep, making a pretty little bow. Then the rabbit gentleman bought her ten little toy, woolly sheep, each one with a tail which Bo Peep could wag for them, and one toy lamb went: “Baa! Baa! Baa!” as real as anything, having a little phonograph talking machine inside him.

“Now I can go home to Mother Goose and make believe these are my lost sheep,” said Bo Peep, “and it will be all right.”

“And here is a piece of chocolate for you to eat,” said Uncle Wiggily. Then Bo Peep hurried home with her fleecy toy sheep, and, later on, she found her real ones, all nice and warm, in the barn where the Cow with the Crumpled Horn lived. Mother Goose laughed in her jolliest way when she saw the toy sheep Uncle Wiggily had bought Bo Peep.

“It’s just like him!” said Mother Goose.

And if the goldfish doesn’t climb out of his tank and hide in the sardine tin, where the stuffed olives can’t find him, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Tommie Tucker.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” called Susie Littletail, the rabbit girl, one day, as she went over to see her bunny uncle in his hollow-stump bungalow. “Oh, Uncle Wiggily! Isn’t it too bad?”

“Isn’t what too bad?” asked the old gentleman rabbit, as he scratched his nose with his left ear, and put his glasses in his pocket, for he was tired of reading the paper, and felt like going out for a walk.

“Too bad about my talking and singing doll, that I got for Christmas,” said Susie. “She won’t sing any more. Something inside her is broken.”

“Broken? That’s too bad!” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “Let me see. What’s her name?”

“Sallieann Peachbasket Shortcake,” answered Susie.

“What a funny name,” laughed the bunny uncle.

Uncle Wiggily took Susie’s doll, which had been given her at Christmas, and looked at it. Inside the doll was a sort of phonograph, or talking machine—a very small one, you know—and when you pushed on a little button in back of the doll’s dress she would laugh and talk. But, best of all, when she was in working order, she would sing a verse, which went something like this:

Uncle Wiggily wound up the spring in the doll’s side, and then he pressed the button—like a shoe button—in her back. But this time Susie’s doll did not talk, she did not laugh, and, instead of singing, she only made a scratchy noise like a phonograph when it doesn’t want to play, or like Bully No-Tail, the frog boy, when he has a cold in his head.

“Oh, dear! This is quite too bad!” said Uncle Wiggily. “Quite indeed.”

“Isn’t it!” exclaimed Susie. “Do you think you can fix her, Uncle?”

Mr. Longears turned the doll upside down and shook her. Things rattled inside her, but even then she did not sing.

“Oh, dear!” cried Susie, her little pink nose going twinkle-inkle, just as did Uncle Wiggily’s. “What can we do?”

“You leave it to me, Susie,” spoke the old rabbit gentleman. “I’ll take the doll to the toy shop, where I bought Little Bo Peep’s sheep, and have her mended.”

“Oh, goodie!” cried Susie, clasping her paws. “Now I know it will be all right,” and she kissed Uncle Wiggily right between his ears.

“Well, I’m sure I hope it will be all right after that,” said the bunny uncle, laughing, and feeling sort of tickled inside.

Off hopped Uncle Wiggily to the toy shop, and there he found the same monkey-doodle gentleman who had sold him the toy woolly sheep for Little Bo Peep.

“Here is more trouble,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Can you fix Susie’s doll so she will sing, for the doll is a little girl one, just like Susie, and her name is Sallieann Peachbasket Shortcake.”

The monkey-doodle man in the toy store looked at the doll.

“I can fix her,” he said. Going in his backroom workshop, where there were rocking-horses that needed new legs, wooden soldiers who had lost their guns, and steamboats that had forgotten their whistles, the toy man soon had Susie’s doll mended again as well as ever. So that she said: “Papa! Mama! I love you! I am hungry!” And she laughed: “Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho!” and she sang:

“Hurray!” cried Uncle Wiggily when he heard this. “Susie’s dolly is all right again. Thank you, Mr. Monkey-Doodle, I’ll take her to Susie.” Then Uncle Wiggily paid the toy-store keeper and hurried off with Susie’s doll.

Uncle Wiggily had not gone very far before, all at once from around the corner of a snow-bank he heard a sad, little voice crying:

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

“My goodness!” said the bunny uncle. “Some one else is in trouble. I wonder who it can be this time?”

He looked, and saw a little boy standing in the snow.

“Hello!” cried Uncle Wiggily, in his jolly voice. “Who are you, and what’s the matter?”

“I am Little Tommie Tucker,” was the answer. “And the matter is I’m hungry.”

“Hungry, eh?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Well, why don’t you eat?”

“I guess you forgot about me and the Mother Goose book,” spoke the boy. “I’m in that book, and it says about me:

“Well?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Why don’t you sing?”

“I—I can’t!” answered Tommie. “That’s the trouble. I have caught such a cold that I can’t sing. And if I don’t sing Mother Goose won’t know it is I, and she won’t give me any supper. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! And I am so hungry!”

“There now, there! Don’t cry,” kindly said the bunny uncle, patting Tommie Tucker on the head. “I’ll soon have you singing for your supper.”

“But how can you when I have such a cold?” asked the little boy. “Listen. I am as hoarse as a crow.”

And, truly, he could no more sing than a rusty gate, or a last year’s door-knob.

“Ah, I can soon fix that!” said Uncle Wiggily. “See, here I have Susie Littletail’s talking and singing doll, which I have just had mended. Now you take the doll in your pocket, go to Mother Goose, and when she asks you to sing for your supper, just push the button in the doll’s back. Then the doll will sing and Mother Goose will think it is you, and give you bread and jam.”

“Oh, how fine!” cried Tommie Tucker. “I’ll do it!”

“But afterward,” said Uncle Wiggily, slowly shaking his paw at Tommie, “afterward you must tell Mother Goose all about the little joke you played, or it would not be fair. Tell her the doll sang and not you.”

“I will,” said Tommie. He and Uncle Wiggily went to Mother Goose’s house, and when Tommie had to sing for his supper the doll did it for him. And when Mother Goose heard about it she said it was a fine trick, and that Uncle Wiggily was very good to think of it.

Then the bunny uncle took Susie’s mended doll to her, and the next day Tommie’s cold was all better and he could sing for his supper himself, just as the book tells about.

And if the little mouse doesn’t go to sleep in the cat’s cradle and scare the milk bottle so it rolls off the back stoop, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Pussy Cat Mole.

“Oh, dear! I don’t believe he’s ever coming!” said Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as she stood at the window of the hollow-stump bungalow one day, and looked down through the woods.

“For whom are you looking, Nurse Jane?” asked Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman. “If it’s for the letter-man, I think he went past some time ago.”

“No, I wasn’t looking for the letter-man,” said the muskrat lady. “I am expecting a messenger-boy cat to bring home my new dress from the dressmaker’s, but I don’t see him.”

“A new dress, eh?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Pray, what is going on?”

“My dress is going on me, as soon as it comes home, Uncle Wiggily,” the muskrat lady answered, laughingly. “And then I am going on over to the house of Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady. She and I are going to have a little tea party together, if you don’t mind.”

“Mind? Certainly not! I’m glad to have you go out and enjoy yourself,” said Uncle Wiggily, jolly like and also laughing.

“But I can’t go if my new dress doesn’t come,” went on Nurse Jane. “That is, I don’t want to.”

“Look here!” said the bunny uncle, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Nurse Jane, I’ll go for your dress myself and bring it home. I have nothing to do. I’ll go get your dress at the dressmaker’s.”

“Will you, really?” cried the muskrat lady. “That will be fine! Then I can curl my whiskers and tie a new pink bow for my tail. You are very good, Uncle Wiggily.”

“Oh, not at all! Not at all!” the rabbit gentleman said, modest like and shy. Then he hopped out of the hollow-stump bungalow and across the fields and through the woods to where Nurse Jane’s dressmaker made dresses.

“Oh, yes, Nurse Jane’s dress!” exclaimed Mrs. Spin-Spider, who wove silk for all the dresses worn by the lady animals of Woodland. “Yes, I have just finished it. I was about to call a messenger-boy cat and send it home, but now you are here you may take it. And here is some cloth I had left over. Nurse Jane might want it if ever she tears a hole in her dress.”

Uncle Wiggily put the extra pieces of cloth in his pocket, and then Mrs. Spin-Spider wrapped Nurse Jane’s dress up nicely for him in tissue paper, as fine as the web which she had spun for the silk, and the rabbit gentleman started back to the hollow-stump bungalow.

Mrs. Spin-Spider lived on Second Mountain, and, as Uncle Wiggily’s bungalow was on First Mountain, he had quite a way to go to get home. And when he was about half way there he passed a little house near a gray rock that looked like an eagle, and in the house he heard a voice saying:

“Oh, dear! Oh, isn’t it too bad? Now I can’t go!”

“Ha! I wonder who that can be?” thought the rabbit gentleman. “It sounds like some one in trouble. I will ask if I can do anything to help.”

The rabbit gentleman knocked on the door of the little house, and a voice said:

“Come in!”

Uncle Wiggily entered, and there in the middle of the room he saw a pussy cat lady holding up a dress with a big hole burned in it.

“I beg your pardon, but who are you and what is the matter?” politely asked the bunny uncle, making a low bow.

“My name is Pussy Cat Mole,” was the answer, “and you can see the trouble for yourself. I am Pussy Cat Mole; I jumped over a coal, and——”

“In your best petticoat burned a great hole,” finished Uncle Wiggily. “I know you, now. You are from Mother Goose’s book and I met you at a party in Belleville, where they have a bluebell flower on the school to call the animal children to their lessons.”

“That’s it!” meowed Pussy Cat Mole. “I am glad you remember me, Uncle Wiggily. It was at a party I met you, and now I am going to another. Or, rather, I was going until I jumped over a coal, and in my best petticoat burned a great hole. Now I can’t go,” and she held up the burned dress, sorrowful like and sad.

“How did you happen to jump over the coal?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, it fell out of my stove,” said Pussy Cat Mole, “and I jumped over it in a hurry to get the fire shovel to take it up. That’s how I burned my dress. And now I can’t go to the party, for it was my best petticoat, and Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady, asked me to be there early, too; and now—Oh, dear!” and Pussy Cat Mole felt very badly, indeed.

“Mrs. Wibblewobble’s!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Why, Nurse Jane is going there to a little tea party, too! This is her new dress I am taking home.”

“Has she burned a hole in it?” asked the pussy cat lady.

“No, she has not, I am glad to say,” the bunny uncle replied. “She hasn’t had it on, yet.”

“Then she can go to the party, but I can’t,” said Pussy Cat Mole, sorrowfully. “Oh, dear!”

“Yes, you can go!” suddenly cried Uncle Wiggily. “See here! I have some extra pieces of cloth, left over when Mrs. Spin-Spider made Nurse Jane’s dress. Now you can take these pieces of cloth and mend the hole burned by the coal in your best petticoat. Then you can go to the party.”

“Oh, so I can,” meowed the pussy cat. So, with a needle and thread, and the cloth she mended her best petticoat.

All around the edges and over the top of the burned hole the pussy cat lady sewed the left-over pieces of Nurse Jane’s dress which was almost the same color. Then, when the mended place was pressed with a warm flat-iron, Uncle Wiggily cried:

“You would never know there had been a burned hole!”

“That’s fine!” meowed Pussy Cat Mole. “Thank you so much, Uncle Wiggily, for helping me!”

“Pray do not mention it,” said the rabbit gentleman, bashful like and casual. Then he hurried to the hollow-stump bungalow with Nurse Jane’s dress, and the muskrat lady said he had done just right to help mend Pussy Cat Mole’s dress with the left-over pieces. So she and Nurse Jane both went to Mrs. Wibblewobble’s little tea party, and had a good time.

And so, you see, it came out just as it did in the book: Pussy Cat Mole jumped over a coal, and in her best petticoat burned a great hole. But the hole it was mended, and my story is ended. Only never before was it known how the hole was mended. Uncle Wiggily did it.

And, if the apple doesn’t jump out of the peach dumpling and hide in the lemon pie when the knife and fork try to play tag with it, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Jack and Jill, and it will be a Valentine story.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old gentleman rabbit, was asleep in an easy chair in his hollow-stump bungalow one morning when he heard some one calling:

“Hi, Jack! Ho, Jill! Where are you? Come at once, if you please!”

“Ha! What’s that? Some one calling me?” asked the bunny uncle, sitting up so suddenly that he knocked over his red, white and blue striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch that Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, had gnawed for him out of a corn-stalk. “Is any one calling me?” asked Mr. Longears.

“No,” answered Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy. “That’s Mother Goose calling Jack and Jill to get a pail of water.”

“Oh! is that all?” asked the rabbit gentleman, rubbing his pink eyes and making his nose twinkle like the sharp end of an ice cream cone. “Just Mother Goose calling Jack and Jill; eh? Well, I’ll go out and see if I can find them for her.”

Uncle Wiggily was always that way, you know, wanting to help some one. This time it was Mother Goose. His new hollow-stump bungalow was built right near where Mother Goose lived, with all her big family; Peter-Peter Pumpkin-Eater, Little Jack Horner, Bo Peep and many others.

“Ho, Jack! Hi, Jill! Where are you?” called Mother Goose, as Uncle Wiggily came out of his hollow stump.

“Can’t you find those two children?” asked the rabbit gentleman, making a polite good morning bow.

“I am sorry to say I cannot,” answered Mother Goose. “They were over to see the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe, a while ago, but where they are now I can’t guess, and I need a pail of water for Simple Simon to go fishing in, for to catch a whale.”

“Oh, I’ll get the water for you,” said Uncle Wiggily, taking the pail. “Perhaps Jack and Jill are off playing somewhere, and they have forgotten all about getting the water.”

“And I suppose they’ll forget about tumbling down hill, too,” went on Mother Goose, sort of nervous like. “But they must not. If they don’t fall down, so Jack can break his crown, it won’t be like the story in my book, and everything will be upside down.”

“So Jack has to break his crown; eh?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “That’s too bad. I hope he won’t hurt himself too much.”

“Oh, he’s used to it by this time,” Mother Goose said. “He doesn’t mind falling, nor does Jill mind tumbling down after.”

“Very well, then, I’ll get the pail of water for you,” spoke the bunny uncle, “and Jack and Jill can do the tumbling-down-hill part.”

Uncle Wiggily took the water pail and started for the hill, on top of which was the well owned by Mother Goose. As the bunny uncle was walking along he suddenly heard a voice calling to him from behind a bush.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily, will you do me a favor?”

“I certainly will,” said Mr. Longears, “but who are you, and where are you?”

“Here I am, over here,” the voice went on. “I’m Jack, and will you please give this to Jill when you see her?”

Out from behind the bush stepped Jack, the little Mother Goose boy. In his hand he held a piece of white birch bark, prettily colored red, green and pink, and on it was a little verse which read:

“What’s this? What’s this?” asked Uncle Wiggily, in surprise. “What’s this?”

“It’s a valentine for Jill,” said Jack. “To-day is Valentine’s Day, you see, but I don’t want Jill to know I sent it, so I went off here and hid until I could see you to ask you to take it to her.”

“All right, I’ll do it,” Uncle Wiggily said, laughing. “I’ll take your valentine to Jill for you. So that’s why you weren’t ’round to get the pail of water; is it?”

“Yes,” answered Jack. “I wanted to finish making my valentine. As soon as you give it to Jill I’ll get the water.”

“Oh, never mind that,” said the bunny uncle. “I’ll get the water, just you do the falling-down-hill part. I’m too old for that.”

“I will,” promised Jack. Then Uncle Wiggily went on up the hill, and pretty soon he heard some one else calling him, and, all of a sudden, out from behind a stump stepped Jill, the little Mother Goose girl.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” said Jill, bashfully holding out a pretty red leaf, shaped like a heart, “will you please give this to Jack. I don’t want him to know I sent it.”

“Of course, I’ll give it to him,” promised the rabbit gentleman. “It’s a valentine, I suppose, and here is something for you,” and while Jill was reading the valentine Jack had sent her, Uncle Wiggily looked at the red heart-shaped leaf. On it Jill had written in blue ink:

“My, that’s nice!” said Uncle Wiggily, laughing. “So that’s why you’re hiding off here for, Jill, to make a valentine for Jack?”

“That’s it,” Jill answered, blushing sort of pink, like the frosting on a strawberry cake. “But I don’t want Jack to know it.”

“I’ll never tell him,” said Uncle Wiggily.

So he went on up the hill to get a pail of water for Mother Goose. And on his way back he gave Jill’s valentine to Jack, who liked it very much.

“And now, since you got the water, Jill and I will go tumble down hill,” said Jack, as he found the little girl, where she was reading his valentine again. Up the hill they went, near the well of water, and Jack fell down, and broke his crown, while Jill came tumbling after, while Uncle Wiggily looked on and laughed. So it all happened just as it did in the book, you see.

Mother Goose was very glad Uncle Wiggily had brought the water for Simple Simon to go fishing in, and that afternoon she gave a valentine party for Sammie and Susie Littletail, the Bushytail squirrel brothers, Nannie and Billie Wagtail, the goats, and all the other animal friends of Uncle Wiggily. And every one had a fine time.

And if the cup doesn’t jump out of the saucer and hide in the spoonholder, where the coffee cake can’t find it, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and little Jack Horner.

“Well, I think I’ll go for a walk,” said Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, one afternoon, when he was sitting out on the front porch of his hollow-stump bungalow. He had just eaten a nice dinner that Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, had gotten ready for him.

“Go for a walk!” exclaimed Nurse Jane. “Why, Mr. Longears, excuse me for saying so, but you went walking this morning.”

“I know I did,” answered the bunny uncle, “but no adventure happened to me then. I don’t really count it a good day unless I have had an adventure. So I’ll go walking again, and perhaps I may find one. If I do, I’ll come home and tell you all about it.”

“All right,” said Nurse Jane. “You are a funny rabbit, to be sure! Going off in the woods, looking for adventures when you might sit quietly here on the bungalow front porch.”

“That’s just it!” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “I don’t like to be too quiet. Off I go!”

“I hope you have a nice adventure!” Nurse Jane called after him.

“Thank you,” answered Uncle Wiggily, politely.

Away over the fields and through the woods went the bunny uncle, looking on all sides for an adventure, when, all of a sudden he heard behind him a sound that went:

“Honk! Honk! Honkity-honk-honk!”

“Ha! That must be a wild goose!” thought the rabbit gentleman.

So he looked up in the air, over his head, where the wild geese always fly, but, instead of seeing any of the big birds, Uncle Wiggily felt something whizz past him, and again he heard the loud “Honk-honk!” noise, and then he sneezed, for a lot of dust from the road flew up his nose.

“My!” he heard some one cry. “We nearly ran over a rabbit! Did you see?”

And a big automobile, with real people in it, shot past. It was the horn of the auto that Uncle Wiggily had heard, and not a wild goose.

“Ha! That came pretty close to me,” thought Uncle Wiggily, as the auto went on down the road. “I never ride my automobile as fast as that, even when I sprinkle pepper on the bologna sausage tires. I don’t like to scare any one.”

Perhaps the people in the auto did not mean to so nearly run over Uncle Wiggily. Let us hope so.

The old gentleman rabbit hopped on down the road, that was between the woods and the fields, and, pretty soon, he saw something bright and shining in the dust, near where the auto had passed.

“Oh, maybe that’s a diamond,” he said, as he stooped over to pick it up. But it was only a shiny button-hook, and not a diamond at all. Some one in the automobile had dropped it.

“Well, I’ll put it in my pocket,” said Uncle Wiggily to himself. “It may come in useful to button Nurse Jane’s shoes, or mine.”

The bunny gentleman went on a little farther, and, pretty soon, he came to a tiny house, with a red chimney sticking up out of the roof.

“Ha! I wonder who lives there?” said Uncle Wiggily.

He stood still for a moment, looking through his glasses at the house and then, all of a sudden, he saw a little lady, with a tall, peaked hat on, run out and look up and down the road. Her hat was just like an ice cream cone turned upside down. Only don’t turn your ice cream cone upside down if it has any cream in it, for you might spill your treat.

“Help! Help! Help!” cried the lady, who had come out of the house with the red chimney.

“Ha! That sounds like trouble!” said Uncle Wiggily. “I think I had better hurry over there and see what it is all about.”

He hopped over toward the little house, and, when he reached it he saw that the little lady who was calling for help was Mother Goose herself.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” exclaimed Mother Goose. “I am so glad to see you! Will you please go for help for me?”

“Why, certainly I will,” answered the bunny gentleman. “But what kind of help do you want; help for the kitchen, or a wash-lady help or——”

“Neither of those,” said Mother Goose. “I want help so Little Jack Horner can get his thumb out of the pie.”

“Get his thumb out of the pie!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “What in the world do you mean?”

“Why, you see it’s this way,” went on Mother Goose. “Jack Horner lives here. You must have heard about him. He is in my book. His verse goes like this:

“That’s the boy I mean,” cried Mother Goose. “But the trouble is that Jack can’t get his thumb out. He put it in the pie, to pull out the plum, but it won’t come out—neither the plum nor the thumb. They are stuck fast for some reason or other. I wish you’d go for Dr. Possum, so he can help us.”

“I will,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But is Jack Horner sitting in a corner, as it says in the book?”

“Oh, he’s doing that all right,” answered Mother Goose. “But, corner or no corner, he can’t pull out his thumb.”

“I’ll get the doctor at once,” promised the bunny uncle. He hurried over to Dr. Possum’s house, but could not find him, as Dr. Possum was, just then, called to see Jillie Longtail, who had the mouse-trap fever.

“Dr. Possum not in!” cried Mother Goose, when Uncle Wiggily had hopped back and told her. “That’s too bad! Oh, we must do something for Jack. He’s crying and going on terribly because he can’t get his thumb out.”

Uncle Wiggily thought for a minute. Then, putting his paw in his pocket, he felt the button-hook which had dropped from the automobile that nearly ran over him.

“Ha! I know what to do!” cried the bunny uncle, suddenly.

“What?” asked Mother Goose.

“I’ll pull out Jack’s thumb myself, with this button-hook,” said Mr. Longears. “I’ll make him all right without waiting for Dr. Possum.”

Into the room, where, in the corner, Jack was sitting, went the bunny gentleman. There he saw the Christmas-pie boy, with his thumb away down deep under the top crust.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” cried Jack. “I’m in such trouble. Oh, dear! I can’t get my thumb out. It must be caught on the edge of the pan, or something!”

“Don’t cry,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “I’ll get it out for you.”

So he put the button-hook through the hole in the top pie crust, close to Jack’s thumb. Then, getting the hook on the plum, Uncle Wiggily, with his strong paws, pulled and pulled and pulled, and——

All of a sudden out came the plum and Jack Horner’s thumb, and they weren’t stuck fast any more.

“Oh, thank you, so much!” said Jack, as he got up out of his corner.

“Pray don’t mention it,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, politely. “I am glad I could help you, and it also makes an adventure for me.”

Then Jack Horner, went back to his corner and ate the plum that stuck to his thumb. And Uncle Wiggily, putting the button-hook back in his pocket, went on to his hollow-stump bungalow. He had had his adventure.

So everything came out all right, you see, and if the snow-shovel doesn’t go off by itself, sliding down hill with the ash can, when it ought to be boiling the cups and saucers for supper, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Mr. Pop-Goes.

“Uncle Wiggily,” said Mrs. Littletail, the rabbit lady, one morning, as she came in the dining-room where Mr. Longears was reading the cabbage leaf paper after breakfast, “Uncle Wiggily, I don’t like you to go out in such a storm as this, but I do need some things from the store, and I have no one to send.”

“Why, I’ll be only too glad to go,” cried the bunny uncle, who was spending a few days visiting the Littletail family in their underground burrow-house. “It isn’t snowing very hard,” and he looked out through the window, which was up a little way above ground to make the burrow light. “What do you want, Mrs. Littletail?” he asked.

“Oh, I want a loaf of bread and some sugar,” said the bunny mother of Sammie and Susie Littletail.

“And you shall certainly have what you want!” cried Uncle Wiggily, as he got ready to go to the store. Soon he was on his way, wearing his fur coat, and hopping along on his corn-stalk rheumatism crutch, while his pink nose was twinkling in the frosty air like a red lantern on the back of an automobile.

“A loaf of home-made bread and three and a half pounds of granulated sugar,” said Uncle Wiggily to the monkey-doodle gentleman who kept the grocery store. “And the best that you have, if you please, as it’s for Mrs. Littletail.”

“You shall certainly have the best!” cried the monkey-doodle gentleman, with a jolly laugh. And while he was wrapping up the things for Uncle Wiggily to carry home, all at once there sounded in the store a loud:

“Pop!”

“My! What’s that?” asked Uncle Wiggily, surprised like and excited. “I heard a bang like a gun. Are there any hunter-men, with their dogs about? If there are I must be careful.”

“No, that wasn’t a gun,” said the monkey-doodle gentleman. “That was only one of the toy balloons in my window. I had some left over from last year, so I blew them up and put them in my window to make it look pretty. Now and then one of them bursts.” And just then, surely enough, “Pop! Bang!” went another toy balloon, bursting and shriveling all up.

Uncle Wiggily looked in the front window of the store and saw some blown-up balloons that had not burst.

“I’ll take two of those,” he said to the monkey-doodle gentleman. “Sammie and Susie Littletail will like to play with them.”

“Better take two or three,” said the monkey-doodle gentleman. “I’ll let you have them cheap, as they are old balloons, and they will burst easily.”

So he let the air out of four balloons and gave them to Uncle Wiggily to take home to the bunny children.

The rabbit gentleman started off through the snow-storm toward the underground house, but he had not gone very far before, just as he was coming out from behind a big stump, he heard voices talking.

“Now, I’ll tell you how we can get those rabbits,” Uncle Wiggily heard one voice say. “I’ll crawl down in the burrow, and as soon as they see me they’ll be scared and run out—Uncle Wiggily, Mrs. Littletail, the two children, Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy and all. Then you can grab them, Mr. Bigtail! I am glad I happened to meet you!”

“Ah, ha!” thought Uncle Wiggily. “Mr. Bigtail! I ought to know that name. It’s the fox, and he and some one else seem to be after us rabbits. But I thought the fox promised to be good and let me alone. He must have changed his mind.”

Uncle Wiggily peeked cautiously around the stump, taking care to make no noise, and there he saw a fox and another animal talking. And the rabbit gentleman saw that it was not the fox who had promised to be good, but another one, of the same name, who was bad.

“Yes, I’ll go down the hole and drive out the rabbits and you can grab them,” said the queer animal.

“That’s good,” growled the fox, “but to whom have I the honor of speaking?” That was his way of asking the name of the other animal, you see.

“Oh, I’m called Mr. Pop-Goes,” said the other.

“Mr. Pop-Goes! What a queer name,” said the fox, and all the while Uncle Wiggily was listening with his big ears, and wondering what it all meant.

“Oh, Pop-Goes isn’t all my name,” said the queer animal. “Don’t you know the story in the book? The monkey chased the cobbler’s wife all around the steeple. That’s the way the money goes, Pop! goes the weasel. I’m Mr. Pop-Goes, the weasel, you see. I’m ’specially good at chasing rabbits.”

“Oh, I see!” barked Mr. Bigtail, the fox. “Well, I’ll be glad if you can help me get those rabbits. I’ve been over to that Uncle Wiggily’s hollow-stump bungalow, but he isn’t around.”

“No, he’s visiting the Littletail rabbits,” said Mr. Pop-Goes, the weasel. “But we’ll drive him out.”

Then Uncle Wiggily felt very badly, indeed, for he knew that a weasel is the worst animal a rabbit can have after him. Weasels are very fond of rabbits. They love them so much they want to eat them, and Uncle Wiggily did not want to be eaten, even by Mr. Pop-Goes.

“Oh, dear!” he thought. “What can I do to scare away the bad fox and Mr. Pop-Goes, the weasel? Oh, dear!” Then he thought of the toy balloons, that made a noise like a gun when they were blown up and burst. “The very thing!” thought the rabbit gentleman.

Carefully, as he hid behind the stump, Uncle Wiggily took out one of the toy balloons. Carefully he blew it up, bigger and bigger and bigger, until, all at once:

“Bang!” exploded the toy balloon, even making Uncle Wiggily jump. And as for the fox and Mr. Pop-Goes, the weasel, why they were so kerslostrated (if you will kindly excuse me for using such a word) that they turned a somersault, jumped up in the air, came down, turned a peppersault, and started to run.

“Did you hear that noise?” asked the weasel. “That was a pop, and whenever I hear a pop I have to go! And I’m going fast!”

“So am I!” barked the fox. “That was a hunter with a gun after us, I guess. We’ll get those rabbits some other time.”

“Maybe you will, and maybe not!” laughed Uncle Wiggily, as he hurried on to the burrow with the bread, sugar and the rest of the toy balloons, with which Sammie and Susie had lots of fun.

So you see Mr. Pop-Goes, the weasel, didn’t get Uncle Wiggily after all, and if the pepper caster doesn’t throw dust in the potato’s eyes, and make it sneeze at the rag doll, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Simple Simon.

“There!” exclaimed Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, who, with Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, was visiting at the Littletail rabbit burrow one day. “There they are, Uncle Wiggily, all nicely wrapped up for you to carry.”

“What’s nicely wrapped up?” asked the bunny uncle. “And what do you want me to carry?” And he looked over the tops of his spectacles at the muskrat lady, sort of surprised and wondering.

“I want you to carry the jam tarts, and they are all nicely wrapped up,” went on Nurse Jane. “Don’t you remember, I said I was going to make some for you to take over to Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady?”

“Oh, of course!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “The jam tarts are for Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble, the duck children. I remember now. I’ll take them right over.”

“They are all nicely wrapped up in a clean napkin,” went on the muskrat lady, “so be careful not to squash them and squeeze out the jam, as they are very fresh.”

“I’ll be careful,” promised the old rabbit gentleman, as he put on his fur coat and took down off the parlor mantle his red, white and blue striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch, made of a corn-stalk.

“Oh, wait a minute, Uncle Wiggily! Wait a minute!” cried Mrs. Littletail, the bunny mother of Sammie and Susie, the rabbit children, as Mr. Longears started out. “Where are you going?”

“Over to Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady’s house, with some jam tarts for Lulu, Alice and Jimmie,” answered Uncle Wiggily.

“Then would you mind carrying, also, this little rubber plant over to her?” asked Mrs. Littletail. “I told Mrs. Wibblewobble I would send one to her the first chance I had.”

“Right gladly will I take it,” said Uncle Wiggily. So Mrs. Littletail, the rabbit lady, wrapped the pot of the little rubber plant, with its thick, shiny green leaves, in a piece of paper, and Uncle Wiggily, tucking it under one paw, while with the other he leaned on his crutch, started off over the fields and through the woods, with the jam tarts in his pocket. Over toward the home of the Wibblewobble duck family he hopped.

Mr. Longears, the nice old rabbit gentleman, had not gone very far before, all at once, from behind a snow-covered stump, he heard a voice saying:

“Oh, dear! I know I’ll never find him! I’ve looked all over and I can’t see him anywhere. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What shall I do?”

“My! That sounds like some one in trouble,” Uncle Wiggily said to himself. “I wonder if that is any of my little animal friends? I must look.”

So the rabbit gentleman peeked over the top of the stump, and there he saw a queer-looking boy, with a funny smile on his face, which was as round and shiny as the bottom of a new dish pan. And the boy looked so kind that Uncle Wiggily knew he would not hurt even a lollypop, much less a rabbit gentleman.

“Oh, hello!” cried the boy, as soon as he saw Uncle Wiggily. “Who are you?”

“I am Mr. Longears,” replied the bunny uncle. “And who are you?”

“Why, I’m Simple Simon,” was the answer. “I’m in the Mother Goose book, you know.”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But you seem to be out of the book, just now.”

“I am,” said Simple Simon. “The page with my picture on it fell out of the book, and so I ran away. But I can’t find him anywhere and I don’t know what to do.”

“Who is it you can’t find?” asked the rabbit.

“The pie-man,” answered the funny, round-faced boy. “Don’t you remember, it says in the book, ‘Simple Simon met a pie-man going to the fair?’”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” Uncle Wiggily answered. “What’s next?”

“Well, I can’t find him anywhere,” said Simple Simon. “I guess the pie-man didn’t fall out of the book when I did.”

“That’s too bad,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, kindly.

“It is,” said Simple Simon. “For you know he ought to ask me for my penny, when I want to taste of his pies, and indeed, I haven’t any penny—not any, and I’m so hungry for a piece of pie!” And Simple Simon began to cry.

“Oh, don’t cry,” said Uncle Wiggily. “See, in my pocket I have some jam tarts. They are for Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble, the ducks, but there are enough to let you have one.”

“Why, you are a regular pie-man yourself; aren’t you?” laughed Simple Simon, as he ate one of Nurse Jane’s nice jam tarts.

“Well, you might call me that,” said the bunny uncle. “Though I s’pose a tart-man would be nearer right.”

“But there’s something else,” went on Simple Simon. “You know in the Mother Goose book I have to go for water, in my mother’s sieve. But soon it all ran through.” And then, cried Simple Simon, “Oh, dear, what shall I do?” And he held out a sieve, just like a coffee strainer, full of little holes. “How can I ever get water in that?” he asked. “I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t. No one can! It all runs through!”

Uncle Wiggily thought for a minute. Then he cried:

“I have it! I’ll pull some leaves off the rubber plant I am taking to Mrs. Wibblewobble. We’ll put the leaves in the bottom of the sieve, and, being of rubber, water can’t get through them. Then the sieve will hold water, or milk either, and you can bring it to your mother.”

“Oh, fine!” cried Simple Simon, licking the sticky squeegee jam off his fingers. So Uncle Wiggily put some rubber plant leaves in the bottom of the sieve, and Simple Simon, filling it full of water, carried it home to his mother, and not a drop ran through, which, of course, wasn’t at all like the story in the book.

“But that isn’t my fault,” said Uncle Wiggily, as he took the rest of the jam tarts to the Wibblewobble children. “I just had to help Simple Simon.” Which was very kind of Uncle Wiggily, I think; don’t you? It didn’t matter if, just once, something happened that wasn’t in the book.

And Mrs. Wibblewobble didn’t at all mind some of the leaves being off her rubber plant. So you see we should always be kind when we can; and if the canary bird doesn’t go to sleep in the bowl with the goldfish, and forget to whistle like an alarm clock in the morning, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the crumple-horn cow.

“Where are you going, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as she saw the rabbit gentleman starting out from his hollow-stump bungalow one day. He was back again from his visit to Sammie and Susie Littletail.

“Oh, I’m just going for a walk,” answered Mr. Longears. “I have not had an exciting adventure since I carried the valentines for Jack and Jill, before they tumbled down hill, and perhaps to-day I may find something else to make me lively, and happy and skippy like.”

“Too much hopping and skipping is not good for you,” the muskrat lady said.

“Yes, I think it is, if you will excuse me for saying so,” spoke Uncle Wiggily politely. “It keeps my rheumatism from getting too painful.”

Then, taking his red, white and blue-striped rheumatism crutch from inside the talking machine horn, Uncle Wiggily started off.

Over the fields and through the woods went the rabbit gentleman, until, pretty soon, as he was walking along, wondering what would happen to him that day, he heard a voice saying:

“Moo! Moo! Moo-o-o-o-o!”

“Ah! That sounds rather sad and unhappy like,” spoke the rabbit gentleman to himself. “I wonder if it can be any one in trouble?”

So he peeked through the bushes and there he saw a nice cow, who was standing with one foot in the hollow of a big stump.

“Moo! Moo!” cried the cow. “Oh, dear, will no one help me?”

“Why, of course, I’ll help you,” kindly said Uncle Wiggily. “What is the matter, and who are you?”

“Why, I am the Mother Goose cow with the crumpled horn,” was the answer, “and my foot is caught so tightly in the hole of this stump that I cannot get it out.”

“Why, I’ll help you, Mrs. Crumpled-horn Cow,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. Then, with his rheumatism crutch, the rabbit gentleman pushed loose the cow’s hoof from where it was caught in the stump, and she was all right again.

“Oh, thank you so much, Uncle Wiggily,” spoke the crumpled-horn cow. “If ever I can do you a favor I will.”

“Thank you,” said the rabbit gentleman, politely. “I’m sure you will. But how did you happen to get your hoof caught in that stump?”

“Oh, I was standing on it, trying to see if I could jump over the moon,” was the answer.

“Jump over the moon!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “You surprise me! Why in the world——”

“It’s this way, you see,” spoke the crumpled-horn lady cow. “In the Mother Goose book it says: ‘Hi-diddle-diddle, the cat’s in the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.’ Well, if one cow did that, I don’t see why another one can’t. I got up on the stump, to try and jump over the moon, but my foot slipped and I was caught fast.

“I suppose I should not have tried it, for I am the cow with the crumpled horn. You have heard of me, I dare say. I’m the cow with the crumpled horn, that little Boy Blue drove out of the corn. I tossed the dog that worried that cat that caught the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.”

“Oh, I remember you now,” said Uncle Wiggily.

“And this is my crumpled horn,” went on the cow, and she showed the rabbit gentleman how one of her horns was all crumpled and crooked and twisted, just like a corkscrew that is used to pull hard corks out of bottles.

“Well, thank you again for pulling out my foot,” said the cow, as she turned away. “Now I must go toss that dog once more, for he’s always worrying the cat.”

So the cow went away, and Uncle Wiggily hopped on through the woods and over the fields. He had had an adventure, you see, helping the cow, and later on he had another one, for he met Jimmie Wibblewobble, the boy duck, who had lost his penny going to the store for a corn-meal-flavored lollypop. Uncle Wiggily found the penny in the snow, and Jimmie was happy once more.

The next day when Uncle Wiggily awakened in his hollow-stump bungalow, and tried to get out of bed, he was so lame and stiff that he could hardly move.

“Oh, dear!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “Ouch! Oh, what a pain!”

“What is it?” asked Nurse Jane. “What’s the matter?”

“My rheumatism,” answered Uncle Wiggily. “Please send to Dr. Possum and get some medicine. Ouch! Oh, my!”

“I’ll go for the medicine myself,” Nurse Jane said, and, tying her tail up in a double bow-knot, so she would not step on it, and trip, as she hurried along, over to Dr. Possum’s she went.

The doctor was just starting out to go to see Nannie Wagtail, the little goat girl, who had the hornache, but before going there Dr. Possum ran back into his office, got a big bottle of medicine, which he gave to Nurse Jane, saying:

“When you get back to the hollow-stump bungalow pull out the cork and rub some on Uncle Wiggily’s pain.”

“Rub the cork on?” asked Nurse Jane, sort of surprised like.

“No, rub on some of the medicine from the bottle,” answered Dr. Possum, laughing as he hurried off.

Uncle Wiggily had a bad pain when Nurse Jane got back.

“I’ll soon fix you,” said the muskrat lady. “Wait until I get the cork out of this bottle.” But that was more easily said than done. Nurse Jane tried with all her might to pull out the cork with her paws and even with her teeth. Then she used a hair pin, but it only bent and twisted itself all up in a knot.

“Oh, hurry with the medicine!” begged Uncle Wiggily. “Hurry, please!”

“I can’t get the cork out,” said Nurse Jane. “The cork is stuck in the bottle.”

“Let me try,” spoke the bunny uncle. But he could not get the cork out, either, and his pain was getting worse all the while.

Just then came a knock on the bungalow door, and a voice said:

“I am the cow with the crumpled horn. I just met Dr. Possum, and he told me Uncle Wiggily had the rheumatism. Is there anything I can do for him? I’d like to do him a favor as he did me one.”

“Yes, you can help me,” said the rabbit gentleman. “Can you pull a tight cork out of a bottle?”

“Indeed I can!” mooed the cow. “Just watch me!” She put her crooked, crumpled horn, which was just like a corkscrew, in the cork, and, with one twist, out it came from the bottle as easily as anything. Then Nurse Jane could rub some medicine on Uncle Wiggily’s rheumatism, which soon felt much better.

So you see Mother Goose’s crumpled-horn cow can do other things besides tossing cat-worrying dogs. And if the fried egg doesn’t go to sleep in the dish pan, so the knives and forks can’t play tag there, I’ll tell you next of Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard.

“Uncle Wiggily, have you anything special to do this morning?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper for the rabbit gentleman, as she saw him get up from the breakfast table in his hollow-stump bungalow.

“Anything special? Why, no, I guess not,” answered the bunny uncle. “I was going out for a walk, and perhaps I may meet with an adventure on the way, or I may help some friends of Mother Goose, as I sometimes do.”

“You are always being kind to some one,” said Nurse Jane, “and that is what I want you to do now. I have just made an orange cake, and——”

“An orange cake?” cried Uncle Wiggily, his pink nose twinkling. “How nice! Where did you get the oranges?”

“Up on the Orange Mountains, to be sure,” answered the muskrat lady, with a laugh. “I have made two orange cakes, to tell the exact truth, which I always do. There is one for us and I wanted to send one to Dr. Possum, who was so good to cure you of the rheumatism, when the cow with the crumpled horn pulled the hard cork out of the medicine bottle for us.”

“Send an orange cake to Dr. Possum? The very thing! Oh, fine!” cried the bunny uncle. “I’ll take it right over to him. Put it in a basket, so it will not take cold, Nurse Jane.”

The muskrat lady wrapped the orange cake in a clean napkin, and then put it in the basket for Uncle Wiggily to carry to Dr. Possum.

Off started the old rabbit gentleman, over the woods and through the fields—oh, excuse me just a minute. He did not go over the woods this time. He only did that when he had his airship, which he was not using to-day, for fear of spilling the oranges out of the cake. So he went over the fields and through the woods to Dr. Possum’s office.

“Well, I wonder if I will have any adventure to-day?” thought the old rabbit gentleman, as he hopped along. “I hope I do, for——”

And then he suddenly stopped thinking and listened, for he heard a dog barking, and a voice was sadly saying:

“Oh, dear! It’s too bad, I know it is, but I can’t help it. It’s that way in the book, so you’ll have to go hungry.”

Then the dog barked again and Uncle Wiggily said:

“More trouble for some one. I hope it isn’t the bad dog who used to bother me. I wonder if I can help any one?”

He looked around, and, nearby, he saw a little wooden house on the top of a hill. The barking and talking was coming from that house.

“I’ll go up and see what is the matter,” said the rabbit gentleman. “Perhaps I can help.”

He looked through a window of the house before going in, and he saw a lady, somewhat like Mother Goose, wearing a tall, peaked hat, like an ice cream cone turned upside down. And with her was a big dog, who was looking in an open cupboard and barking. And the lady was singing:

“And isn’t there anything else in the house to eat, except a bone, Mother Hubbard?” the dog asked. “I’m so hungry!”

“There isn’t, I’m sorry to say,” she answered. “But I’ll go to the baker’s to get you some bread——”

“And when you come back you will think I am dead,” said the dog, quickly. “I’ll look so, anyhow,” he went on, “for I am so hungry. Isn’t there any way of getting me anything to eat without going to the baker’s? I don’t care much for bread, anyhow.”

“How would you like a piece of orange cake?” asked Uncle Wiggily, all of a sudden, as he walked in Mother Hubbard’s house. “Excuse me,” said the bunny uncle, “but I could not help hearing what your dog said. I know how hard it is to be hungry, and I have an orange cake in my basket. It is for Dr. Possum, but I am sure he would be glad to let your dog have some.”

“That is very kind of you,” said Mother Hubbard.

“And I certainly would like orange cake,” spoke the dog, making a bow and wagging his nose—I mean his tail.

“Then you shall have it,” said Uncle Wiggily, opening the basket. He set the orange cake on the table, and the dog began to eat it, and Mother Hubbard also ate some, for she was hungry, too, and, what do you think? Before Uncle Wiggily, or any one else knew it, the orange cake was all gone—eaten up—and there was none for Dr. Possum.

“Oh, see what we have done!” cried Mother Hubbard, sadly. “We have eaten all your cake, Uncle Wiggily. I’m sure we did not mean to, but with a hungry dog——”

“Pray do not mention it,” said the rabbit gentleman, politely. “I know just how it is. I have another orange cake of my own at home. I’ll go get that for Dr. Possum. He won’t mind which one he has.”

“No. I can’t let you do that,” spoke Mother Hubbard. “You were too kind to be put to all that trouble. Next door to me lives Paddy Kake, the baker-man. I’ll have him bake you a cake as fast as he can, and you can take that to Dr. Possum. How will that do?”

“Why, that will be just fine!” said Uncle Wiggily, twinkling his pink nose at the dog, who was licking up the last of the cake crumbs with his red tongue.

So Mother Hubbard went next door, where lived Paddy Kake, the baker. And she said to him:

“I will,” said Paddy Kake. “I’ll do it right away.”

And he did, and as soon as the cake was baked Uncle Wiggily put it in the basket where the orange one had been, and took it to Dr. Possum, who was very glad to get it. For the raisin and plum cake was as good as the orange one Mother Hubbard and her dog had eaten.

So you see everything came out all right after all, and if the cork doesn’t pop out of the ink bottle and go to sleep in the middle of the white bedspread, like our black cat, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Little Miss Muffet.

“Rat-a-tat-tat!” came a knock on the door of the hollow-stump bungalow, where Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, lived with Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper. “Rat-a-tat-tat!”

“Come in,” called Nurse Jane, who was sitting by a window, mending a pair of Uncle Wiggily’s socks, which had holes in them.

The door opened, and into the bungalow stepped a little girl. Oh, she was such a tiny thing that she was not much larger than a doll.

“How do you do, Nurse Jane,” said the little girl, making a low bow, and shaking her curly hair.

“Why, I am very well, thank you,” the muskrat lady said. “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m very well, too, Nurse Jane.”

“Ha! You seem to know me, but I am not so sure I know you,” said Uncle Wiggily’s housekeeper. “Are you Little Bo Peep?”

“No, Nurse Jane,” answered the little girl, with a smile.

“Are you Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” Nurse Jane wanted to know.

“I am not Mistress Mary,” answered the little girl.

“Then who are you?” Nurse Jane asked.

“I am little Miss Muffet, if you please, and I have come to sit on a tuffet, and eat some curds and whey. I want to see Uncle Wiggily, too, before I go away.”

“All right,” spoke Nurse Jane. “I’ll get you the tuffet and the curds and whey,” and she went out to the kitchen. The muskrat lady noticed that Miss Muffet said nothing about the spider frightening her away.

“Perhaps she doesn’t like to talk about it,” thought Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy, “though it’s in the Mother Goose book. Well, I’ll not say anything, either.”

So she got the tuffet for little Miss Muffet; a tuffet being a sort of baby footstool. And, indeed, the little girl had to sit on something quite small, for her legs were very short.

“And here are your curds and whey,” went on Nurse Jane, bringing in a bowl. Curds and whey are very good to eat. They are made from milk, sweetened, and are something like a custard in a cup.

So little Miss Muffet, sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey, just as she ought to have done.

“And,” said Nurse Jane to herself, “I do hope no spider will come sit beside her to frighten Miss Muffet away, before Uncle Wiggily sees her, for she is a dear little child.”

Pretty soon some one was heard hopping up the front steps of the bungalow, and Nurse Jane said:

“There is Uncle Wiggily now, I think.”

“Oh, I’m glad!” exclaimed little Miss Muffet, as she handed the muskrat lady the empty bowl of curds and whey. “I want to see him very specially.”

In came hopping the nice old rabbit gentleman, and he knew Little Miss Muffet right away, and was very glad to see her.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” cried the little girl. “I have been waiting to see you. I want you to do me a very special extra favor; will you?”

“Why, of course, if I can,” answered the bunny uncle, with a polite bow. “I am always glad to do favors.”

“You can easily do this one,” said Little Miss Muffet. “I want you to come——”

And just then Uncle Wiggily saw a big spider crawling over the floor toward the little girl, who was still on her tuffet, having finished her curds and whey.

“And if she sees that spider, sit down beside her, it surely will frighten her away,” thought Uncle Wiggily, “and I will not be able to find out what she wants me to do for her. Let me see, she hasn’t yet noticed the spider. I wonder if I could get her out of the room while I asked the spider to kindly not to do any frightening, at least for a while?”

So Uncle Wiggily, who was quite worried, sort of waved his paw sideways at the spider, and twinkled his pink nose and said “Ahem!” which meant that the spider was to keep on crawling, and not go near Miss Muffet. Uncle Wiggily himself was not afraid of spiders.

“Yes, Uncle Wiggily,” went on little Miss Muffet, who had not yet seen the spider. “I want you to come to——” and then she saw the rabbit gentleman making funny noses behind her back, and waving his paw at something, and Miss Muffet cried:

“Why, what in the world is the matter, Uncle Wiggily? Have you hurt yourself?”

“No, no,” the rabbit gentleman quickly exclaimed. “It’s the spider. She’s crawling toward you, and I don’t want her to sit down beside you, and frighten you away.”

Little Miss Muffet laughed a jolly laugh.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” she cried. “I’m not at all afraid of spiders! I’d let a dozen of them sit beside me if they wanted to, for I know they will not harm me, if I do not harm them. And besides, I knew this spider was coming all the while.”

“You did?” cried Nurse Jane, surprised like.

“To be sure I did. She is Mrs. Spin-Spider, and she has come to measure me for a new cobweb silk dress; haven’t you, Mrs. Spin-Spider?”

“Yes, child, I have,” answered the lady spider. “No one need be afraid of me.”

“I’m not,” Uncle Wiggily said, “only I did not want you to frighten Miss Muffet away before she had her curds and whey.”

“Oh, I had them,” the little girl said. “Nurse Jane gave them to me before you came in, Uncle Wiggily. But now let me tell you what I came for, and then Mrs. Spin-Spider can measure me for a new dress. I came to ask if you would do me the favor to come to my birthday party next week. Will you?”

“Of course I will!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll be delighted.”

“Good!” laughed Little Miss Muffet. Then along came Mrs. Spin-Spider, and sat down beside her and did not frighten the little girl away, but, instead, measured her for a new dress.

So from this we may learn that cobwebs are good for something else than catching flies, and in the next chapter, if the piano doesn’t come upstairs to lie down on the brass bed so the pillow has to go down in the coal bin to sleep, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the first little kitten.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old rabbit gentleman, was asleep in his easy chair by the fire which burned brightly on the hearth in his hollow-stump bungalow. Mr. Longears was dreaming that he had just eaten a piece of cherry pie for lunch, and that the cherry pits were dropping on the floor with a “rat-a-tat-tat!” when he suddenly awakened and heard some one knocking on the front door.

“Ha! Who is there? Come in!” cried the rabbit gentleman, hardly awake yet. Then he happened to think:

“I hope it isn’t the bad fox, or the skillery-scalery alligator, whom I have invited in. I ought not to have been so quick.”

But it was none of these unpleasant creatures who had knocked on Uncle Wiggily’s door. It was Mrs. Purr, the nice cat lady, and when the rabbit gentleman had let her in she looked so sad and sorrowful that he said:

“What is the matter, Mrs. Purr? Has anything happened?”

“Indeed there has, Mr. Longears,” the cat lady answered. “You know my three little kittens, don’t you?”

“Why, yes, I know them,” replied the bunny uncle. “They are Fuzzo, Muzzo and Wuzzo. I hope they are not ill?”

“No, they are not ill,” said the cat lady, mewing sadly, “but they have run away, and I came to see if you would help me get them back.”

“Run away! Your dear little kittens!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “You don’t mean it! How did it happen?”

“Well, you know my little kittens had each a new pair of mittens,” said Mrs. Purr.

“Yes, I read about that in the Mother Goose book,” said the rabbit gentleman. “It must be nice to have new mittens.”

“My little kittens thought so,” went on Mrs. Purr. “Their grandmother, Pussy Cat Mole, knitted them.”

“I have met Pussy Cat Mole,” said Uncle Wiggily. “After she jumped over a coal, and in her best petticoat burned a great hole, I helped her mend it so she could go to the party.”

“I heard about that; it was very good of you,” mewed Mrs. Purr. “But about my little kittens, when they got their mittens, what do you think they did?”

“Why, I suppose they went out and played in the snow,” Uncle Wiggily said. “I know that is what I would have done, when I was a little rabbit, if I had had a new pair of mittens.”

“I only wish they had done that,” Mrs. Purr said. “But, instead, they went and ate some cherry pie. The red pie-juice got all over their new mittens, and when they saw it they became afraid I would scold them, and they ran away. I was not home when they ate the pie and soiled their mittens, but the cat lady who lives next door told me.

“Now I want to know if you will try to find my three little kittens for me; Fuzzo, Wuzzo and Muzzo? I want them to come home so badly!”

“I’ll go look for them,” promised the old rabbit gentleman. So taking his red, white and blue rheumatism crutch, off he started over the fields and through the woods. Mrs. Purr went back home to get supper, in case her kittens, with their pie-soiled mittens, should come back by themselves before Uncle Wiggily found them.

On and on went the old rabbit gentleman. He looked on all sides and through the middle for any signs of the lost kittens, but he saw none for quite a while. Then, all at once, he heard a mewing sound over in the bushes, and he said:

“Ha! There is the first little kitten!” And there, surely enough she was—Fuzzo!

“Oh, dear!” Fuzzo was saying, “I don’t believe I’ll ever get them clean!”

“What’s the matter now?” asked the rabbit gentleman, though he knew quite well what it was, and only pretended he did not. “Who are you and what is the matter?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m in such trouble,” said the first little kitten. “My sisters and I ate some pie in our new mittens. We soiled them badly with the red pie-juice. Weren’t we naughty kittens?”

“Well, perhaps just a little bit naughty,” Uncle Wiggily said. “But you should not have run away from your mamma. She feels very badly. Where are Muzzo and Wuzzo?”

“I don’t know!” answered Fuzzo. “They ran one way and I ran another. I’m trying to get the pie-juice out of my mittens, but I can’t seem to do it.”

“How did you try?” Uncle Wiggily wanted to know.

“I am rubbing my mittens up and down on the rough bark of trees and on stones,” answered Fuzzo. “I thought that would take the pie stains out, but it doesn’t.”

“Of course not!” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “Now you come with me. I am going to take you home. Your mother sent me to look for you.”

“Oh, but I’m afraid to go home,” mewed Fuzzo. “My mother will scold me for soiling my nice, new mittens. It says so in the book.”

“No, she won’t!” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “You just leave it to me. But first you come to my hollow-stump bungalow.”

So Fuzzo, the first little kitten, put one paw in Uncle Wiggily’s, and carrying her mittens in the other, along they went together.

“Where are you, Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy?” called the rabbit gentleman, when they reached his hollow-stump bungalow. “I want you to make some nice, hot, soapy suds and water, and wash this first little kitten’s mittens. Then they will be clean, and she can take them home with her.”

So the muskrat lady made some nice, hot, soap-bubbily suds and in them she washed the kitten’s mittens. Then, when they were dry, Uncle Wiggily took the mittens, and also Fuzzo to Mrs. Purr’s house.

“Oh, how glad I am to have you back!” cried the cat mother. “I wouldn’t have scolded you, Fuzzo, for soiling your mittens. You must not be afraid any more.”

“I won’t,” promised the first little kitten, showing her nice, clean mittens.

And then Uncle Wiggily said he would go find the other two lost baby cats. And so, if the milkman doesn’t put goldfish in the ink bottle, to make the puppy dog laugh when he goes to bed, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the second kittie.

“Well, where are you going now, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, of the rabbit gentleman, one day as she saw him starting out of his hollow-stump bungalow, after he had found the first of the little kittens who had soiled their mittens.

“I am going to look for the second little lost kitten,” replied the bunny uncle, “though where she may be I don’t know. Her name is Muzzo.”

“Why, her name is almost like mine, isn’t it?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy.

“A little like it,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Poor little Muzzo! She and the other two kittens ran off after they had soiled their mittens, eating cherry pie when their mother, Mrs. Purr, was not at home.”

“It is very good of you to go looking for them,” said Nurse Jane.

“Oh, I just love to do things like that,” spoke the rabbit gentleman. “Well, good-by. I’ll see if I can’t find the second kitten now.”

Away started the rabbit gentleman, over the fields and through the woods, looking on all sides for the second lost kitten, whose name was Muzzo.

“Where are you, kittie?” called Uncle Wiggily. “Where are you, Muzzo? Come to me! Never mind if your mittens are soiled by cherry-pie-juice. I’ll find a way to clean them.”

But no Muzzo answered. Uncle Wiggily looked everywhere, under bushes and in the tree tops; for sometimes kitty cats climb trees, you know; but no Muzzo could he find. Then Uncle Wiggily walked a little farther, and he saw Billie Wagtail, the goat boy, butting his head in a snow-bank.

“What are you doing, Billie?” asked the rabbit gentleman.

“Oh, just having some fun,” answered Billie, standing up on his hind legs.

“You haven’t seen a little lost kitten, with cherry-pie-juice on her new mittens, have you?” asked the rabbit gentleman.

“No, I am sorry to say I have not,” said Billie, politely. “Did you lose one?”

“No, she lost herself,” said Uncle Wiggily, and he told about Muzzo.

“I’ll help you look for her,” offered the goat boy, so he and Uncle Wiggily started off together to try to find poor little lost Muzzo, and bring her home to her mother, Mrs. Purr.

Pretty soon, as the rabbit gentleman and the goat boy were walking along they heard a little mewing cry behind a pile of snow, and Uncle Wiggily said:

“That sounds like Muzzo now.”

“Perhaps it is. Let’s look,” said Billie Wagtail.

He and the bunny uncle looked over the pile of snow, and there, surely enough, they saw a little white pussy cat sitting on a stone, looking at her mittens, which were all covered with red pie-juice.

“Oh, dear!” the little pussy was saying. “I don’t know how to get them clean! What shall I do? I can’t go home with my mittens all soiled, or my mamma will whip me.”

Of course, Mrs. Purr, the cat lady, would not do anything like that, but Muzzo thought she would.

“What are you trying to do to clean your mittens, Muzzo?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, how you surprised me!” exclaimed the second little lost kitten. “I did not know you were here.”

“Billie Wagtail and I came to look for you,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But what about your mittens?”

“Oh, I have been dipping them in snow, trying to clean them,” said Muzzo. “Only the pie-juice will not come out.”

“Of course not,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, with a laugh. “It needs hot soap suds and water to clean them. You come home to my bungalow and we will get some.”

“Oh, I am so cold and tired I can’t go another step,” said the second little kitten, who had run away from home after she soiled her mittens. “I just can’t.”

“Well, then, I don’t know how you are going to get your mittens washed, out here in the cold and snow,” said the rabbit gentleman.

“Ha! I know a way!” said Billie Wagtail, the goat boy.

“How?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“I’ll get an empty tomato can,” spoke Billie. “I know where there is one, for I was eating the paper off it, to get the paste, just before you came along.”

Goats like to eat paper off tomato cans, you know, because the paper is stuck on with sweet paste, and that is as good to goat children as candy is to you.

“I’ll go get the tomato can,” said Billie, “and you can make a fire, Uncle Wiggily.”

“And then what?” asked the rabbit gentleman.

“Then we will melt some snow, and make some hot water,” went on Billie. “I have a cake of soap in my pocket, that I just bought at the store for my mother.

“With the hot water in the can, and the soap, we can make a suds, and wash Muzzo’s mittens out here as well as at your bungalow.”

“So we can, Billie!” cried the bunny uncle. “You go get the empty tomato tin and I’ll make the fire. You needn’t try to wash your soiled mittens in the snow any more, Muzzo,” he said to the second lost kittie. “We will do it for you, in soapy water, which is better.”

Soon Uncle Wiggily made a fire. Back came Billie Wagtail with the tomato can. Some snow was put in it, and it was set over the blaze. Soon the snow melted into water, and then when the water was hot Uncle Wiggily made a soapy suds as Nurse Jane had done.

“Now I can wash my mittens!” cried Muzzo, and she did. And when they were nice and clean she went home with them, and oh! how glad her mother was to see her!

“Never run away again, Muzzo,” said the cat lady.

“I won’t,” promised the kitten. “But where is Wuzzo?”

“She is still lost,” said Mrs. Purr.

“But I will go find her, too,” said Uncle Wiggily.

And if the apple pie doesn’t go out snowballing with the piece of cheese, and forget to come back to dinner, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the third little kitten.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old gentleman rabbit, came walking slowly up the front path that led to his hollow-stump bungalow. He was limping a little on his red, white and blue-striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch that Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, had gnawed for him out of a corn-stalk.

“Well, I’m glad to be home again,” said the rabbit uncle, sitting down on the front porch to rest a minute. And just then the door in the hollow stump opened, and Nurse Jane, looking out, said:

“Oh, here he is now, Mrs. Purr.”

With that a cat lady came to the door and she said:

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily! I thought you never would come back. Did you find her?”

“Find who?” asked the rabbit gentleman. “I was not looking for any one. I have just been down to Lincoln Park to see some squirrels who live in a hollow tree. They are second cousins to Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels who live in our woods. I had a nice visit with them.”

“Then you didn’t find Wuzzo, my third little lost kitten, did you?” asked Mrs. Purr, the cat mother.

“What! Is Wuzzo still lost?” asked the bunny uncle, in great surprise. “I thought she had come home.”

“No, she hasn’t,” said Mrs. Purr. “You know you found my other kittens, Fuzzo and Muzzo, for me, but Wuzzo, the third little kitten, is still lost. She has been away all night, and I came over here the first thing this morning to see if you would not kindly go look for her. But you had already left and I have been waiting here ever since for you to come back.”

“Yes, I stayed longer with the park squirrels than I meant to,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But now I am back I will start off and try to find Wuzzo. It’s too bad your three little kittens ran away.”

They had, you know, as I told you in the two stories before this one. The three little kittens ate cherry pie with their new mittens on. And they soiled their mittens. Then they were so afraid their mother, Mrs. Purr, would scold them that they all ran away.

But Mrs. Purr was a kind cat, and would not have scolded at all. And when she found her little kittens were gone she asked Uncle Wiggily to find them.

“And you did find the first two, Fuzzo and Muzzo,” said the cat lady. “So I am sure you can find the third one, Wuzzo.”

“I hope I can,” Uncle Wiggily said. “I remember now I started off to find her, but my rheumatism hurt me so I had to come back to my bungalow. Then I forgot all about Wuzzo. But I’m all right now, and I’ll start off.”

So away over the fields and through the woods went Uncle Wiggily, looking for the third little lost kitten. When he had found the two others he had helped them wash the pie-juice off their mittens, so they were nice and clean. And then the kittens were not afraid to go home.

Uncle Wiggily looked all over for the third little kitten, under bushes, up in trees (for cats climb trees, you know), and even behind big rocks Uncle Wiggily looked. But no Wuzzo could he find.

At last, when the rabbit gentleman came to a big hollow log that was lying on the ground, he sat down on it to rest, and, all of a sudden, he heard a voice inside the log speaking. And the voice asked:

“Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?”

“I’ve been to London to see the Queen,” answered another voice.

“Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you do there?”

“I frightened a little mouse, under her chair,” came the answer, and this time it was a little pussy cat kitten speaking, Uncle Wiggily was certain.

The old rabbit gentleman looked in one end of the hollow log, and there surely enough, he saw Wuzzo, the third lost kitten.

And besides Wuzzo, Uncle Wiggily saw Neddie Stubtail, the little bear boy, who always slept in a hollow log all Winter. But this time Neddie was awake, for it was near Spring.

“Wuzzo, Wuzzo! Is that you? What are you doing there?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Don’t you know your poor mother is looking all over for you, and that she has sent me to find you? Why don’t you come home?”

“I—I’m afraid to,” said Wuzzo, crawling out of the hollow log, and Neddie, the boy bear also crawled out, saying:

“Hello, Uncle Wiggily!”

“How do you do, Neddie,” spoke the bunny uncle. “How long has Wuzzo been staying with you?”

“She just ran in my hollow log,” said the little bear chap, “and her tail, brushing against my nose, tickled me so that I sneezed and awakened from my Winter sleep.”

“Where have you been all night, since you ran away, Wuzzo?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“Well,” answered the third little kitten. “After Fuzzo, Muzzo and I soiled our mittens with cherry pie we all ran away.”

“Yes, I know that part,” spoke the bunny uncle. “It was not right to do, but I have found the two other lost kitties. I couldn’t find you, though. Why was that?”

“Because I met Mother Goose,” said Wuzzo, “and she asked me to go to London to see the Queen. She took me through the air on the back of her big gander, and we flew as quickly as you could have gone in your airship.”

“You went to London to see the Queen!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, in surprise. “Well, well! What did you do there?”

“I frightened a little mouse under her chair, just as Mother Goose wanted me to do,” said Wuzzo. “Then the big gander flew with me to these woods and went back to get Mother Goose, who stayed to talk with the Queen. So here I am, but I don’t know the way home.”

“Oh, I’ll take you home all right,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But first we must wash your mittens.”

“Oh, I did that for her, in the log,” said Neddie Stubtail, laughing. “With my red tongue I licked off all the sweet cherry-pie-juice, which I liked very much. So, now the mittens are clean.”

“Good!” cried the bunny uncle. “Now we will go to your mother, Wuzzo. She will be glad to know that you frightened a little mouse under the Queen’s chair.”

So Uncle Wiggily took the third little kitten home, and thus they were all found. And if the cat on our roof doesn’t jump down the chimney, and scare the lemon pie so it turns into an apple dumpling, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the Jack horse.

“Well, where are you going to-day, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as she saw the rabbit gentleman putting on his tall silk hat, and taking his red, white and blue-striped rheumatism crutch down off the mantel.

“I am going over to see Nannie and Billy Wagtail, the goat children,” answered the bunny uncle. “I have not seen them in a long while.”

“But they’ll be at school,” said Nurse Jane.

“I’ll wait until they come home, then,” said Uncle Wiggily. “And while I’m waiting I’ll talk to Uncle Butter, the nice old gentleman goat.”

So off started Uncle Wiggily over the fields and through the woods.

Pretty soon he came to the house where the family of Wagtail goats lived. They were given that name because they wagged their little short tails so very fast, sometimes up and down, and again sideways.

“Why, how do you do, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Mrs. Wagtail, as she opened the door for the rabbit gentleman. “Come and sit down.”

“Thank you,” he answered. “I called to see Nannie and Billie. But I suppose they are at school.”

“Yes, they are studying their lessons.”

“Well, I’ll come in then, and talk to Uncle Butter, for I suppose you are busy.”

“Yes, I am, but not too busy to talk to you, Mr. Longears,” said the goat lady. “Uncle Butter is away, pasting up some circus posters on the billboard, and I wish he’d come back, for I want him to go to the store for me.”

“Couldn’t I go?” asked Uncle Wiggily, politely. “I have nothing special to do, and I often go to the store for Nurse Jane. I’d like to go for you.”

“Very well, you may,” said Mrs. Wagtail. “I want for supper some papers off a tomato can, and a few more off a can of corn, and here is a basket to put them in. And you might bring a bit of brown paper, so I can make soup of it.”

“I will,” said Uncle Wiggily, starting off with the basket on his paw. Goats, you know, like the papers that come off cans, as the papers have sweet paste on them. And they also like brown grocery paper itself, for it has straw in it, and goats like straw. Of course, goats eat other things besides paper, though.

Uncle Wiggily was going carefully along, for there was ice and snow on the ground, and it was slippery, and he did not want to fall. Soon he was at the paper store, where he bought what Mrs. Wagtail wanted.

And on the way back to the goat lady’s house something happened to the old rabbit gentleman. As he stepped over a big icicle he put his foot down on a slippery snowball some little animal chap had left on the path, and, all of a sudden, bango! down went Uncle Wiggily, basket of paper, rheumatism crutch and all.

“Ouch!” cried the rabbit gentleman, “I fear something is broken,” for he heard a cracking sound as he fell.

He looked at his paws and legs and felt of his big ears. They seemed all right. Then he looked at the basket of paper. That was crumpled up, but not broken, and the bunny uncle’s tall silk hat, while it had a few dents in, was not smashed.

“Oh, dear! It’s my rheumatism crutch,” cried Uncle Wiggily. “It’s broken in two, and how am I ever going to walk without it this slippery day I don’t see. Oh, my goodness me sakes alive and some bang-bang tooth powder!”

Carefully the rabbit gentleman arose, but as he had no red, white and blue-striped crutch to lean on, he nearly fell again.

“I guess I’d better stay sitting down,” thought Uncle Wiggily. “Perhaps some one may come along, and I can ask them go get Nurse Jane to gnaw for me another rheumatism crutch out of a corn-stalk. I’ll wait here until help comes.”

Uncle Wiggily waited quite a while, but no one passed by.

“It will soon be time for Billie and Nannie Wagtail to pass by on their way from school,” thought the bunny uncle. “I could send them for another crutch, I suppose.”

So he waited a little longer, and then, as no one came, he tried to walk with his broken crutch. But he could not. Then Uncle Wiggily cried:

“Help! Help! Help!” but still no one came. “Oh, dear!” said the rabbit gentleman, “if only Mother Goose would fly past, riding on the back of her gander, she might take me home.” He looked up, but Mother Goose was not sweeping cobwebs out of the sky that day, so he did not see her.

Then, all of a sudden, as the rabbit gentleman sat there, wondering how he was going to walk on the slippery ice and snow without his crutch to help him, he heard a jolly voice singing:

And with that along through the woods came riding a nice, old lady on a rocking-horse. And on the side of the rocking-horse was painted in red ink the name:

“Why, hello, Uncle Wiggily!” called the nice old lady, shaking her toes and making the bells jingle a pretty tune. “What is the matter with you?” she asked.

“Oh, I am in such trouble,” replied the bunny uncle. “I fell down on a slippery snowball, and broke my crutch. Without it I cannot walk, and I want to take these papers to Mrs. Wagtail, the goat lady, to eat.”

“Ha! If that is all your trouble I can soon fix matters!” cried the jolly old lady. “Here, get up beside me on my Jack horse, and I’ll ride you to Mrs. Wagtail’s, and then take you home to your hollow-stump bungalow.”

“Oh, will you? How kind!” said Uncle Wiggily. “Thank you! But have you the time?”

“Lots of time,” laughed the old lady. “It doesn’t really matter when I get to Banbury Cross. Come on!”

Uncle Wiggily got up on the back of the Jack horse, behind the old lady. She tinkled the rings on her fingers and jingled the bells on her toes, and so, of course, she’ll have music wherever she goes.

“Just as the Mother Goose books says,” spoke the bunny uncle. “Oh, I’m glad you came along.”

“So am I,” said the nice old lady. Then she took Uncle Wiggily to the Wagtail house, where he left the basket of papers, and next he rode on the Jack horse to his bungalow, and, after the bunny uncle had thanked the old lady, she, herself, rode on to Banbury Cross, to see another old lady jump on a white horse. And very nicely she did it too, let me tell you.

So everything came out all right, and in the next chapter, if the apple pie doesn’t turn a somersault and crack its crust so the juice runs out, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the clock-mouse.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old rabbit gentleman, sat in an easy chair in his hollow-stump bungalow. He had just eaten a nice lunch, which Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, had put on the table for him, and he was feeling a bit sleepy.

“Are you going out this afternoon?” asked Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy, as she cleared away the dishes.

“Hum! Ho! Well, I hardly know,” Uncle Wiggily answered, in a sleepy voice. “I may, after I have a little nap.”

“Your new red, white and blue-striped rheumatism crutch is ready for you,” went on Nurse Jane. “I gnawed it for you out of a fine large corn-stalk.”

Uncle Wiggily had broken his other crutch, if you will kindly remember, when he slipped as he was coming back from the store, where he went for Mrs. Wagtail, the goat lady. And it was so slippery that the rabbit gentleman never would have gotten home, only he rode on a Jack horse with the lady, who had rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, as I told you in the story before this one.

“Thank you for making me a new crutch, Nurse Jane,” spoke the bunny uncle. “If I go out I’ll take it.”

Then he went to sleep in his easy chair, but he was suddenly awakened by hearing the bungalow clock strike one. Then, as he sat up and rubbed his eyes with his paws, Uncle Wiggily heard a thumping noise on the hall floor and a little voice squeaked out:

“Ouch! I’ve hurt my leg! Oh, dear!”

“My! I wonder what that can be? It seemed to come out of my clock,” spoke Mr. Longears.

“I did come out of your clock,” said some one.

“You did? Who are you, if you please?” asked the bunny uncle, looking all around. “I can’t see you.”

“That’s because I’m so small,” was the answer. “But here I am, right by the table. I can’t walk as my leg is hurt.”

Uncle Wiggily looked, and saw a little mouse, who was holding his left hind leg in his right front paw.

“Who are you?” asked the bunny uncle.

“I am Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse,” was the answer. “And I am a clock-mouse.”

“A clock-mouse!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, in surprise. “I never heard of such a thing.”

“Oh, don’t you remember me? I’m in Mother Goose’s book. This is how it goes:

“Oh, now I remember you,” said Uncle Wiggily. “And so you are a clock-mouse.”

“Yes, I ran up your clock, and then when the clock struck one, down I had to come. But I ran down so fast that I tripped over the pendulum. The clock reached down its hands and tried to catch me, but it had no eyes in its face to see me, so I slipped, anyhow, and I hurt my leg.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Perhaps I can fix it for you. Nurse Jane, bring me some salve for Hickory Dickory Dock, the clock-mouse,” he called.

The muskrat lady brought some salve, and, with a rag, Uncle Wiggily bound up the leg of the clock-mouse so it did not hurt so much.

“And I’ll lend you a piece of my old crutch, so you can hobble along on it,” said Uncle Wiggily.

“Thank you,” spoke Hickory Dickory Dock, the clock-mouse. “You have been very kind to me, and some day, I hope, I may do you a favor. If I can I will.”

“Thank you,” Uncle Wiggily said. Then Hickory Dickory Dock limped away, but in a few days he was better, and he could run up more clocks, and run down when they struck one.

It was about a week after this that Uncle Wiggily went walking through the woods on his way to see Grandfather Goosey Gander. And just before he reached his friend’s house he met Mother Goose.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily,” she said, swinging her cobweb broom up and down, “I want to thank you for being so kind to Hickory Dickory Dock, the clock-mouse.”

“It was a pleasure to be kind to him,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Is he all better now?”

“Yes, he is all well again,” replied Mother Goose. “He is coming to run up and down your clock again soon.”

“I’ll be glad to see him,” said Uncle Wiggily. Then he went to call on Grandpa Goosey, and he told about Hickory Dickory Dock, falling down from out the clock.

On his way back to his hollow-stump bungalow, Uncle Wiggily took a short cut through the woods. And, as he was passing along, his paw slipped and he became all tangled up in a wild grape vine, which was like a lot of ropes, all twisted together into hard knots.

“Oh, dear!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I’m caught!” The more he tried to untangle himself the tighter he was held fast, until it seemed he would never get out.

“Oh!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “This is terrible. Will no one come to get me out? Help! Help! Will some one please help me?”

“Yes, I will help you, Uncle Wiggily,” answered a kind, little squeaking voice.

“Who are you?” asked the rabbit gentleman, moving a piece of the grape vine away from his nose, so he could speak plainly.

“I am Hickory Dickory Dock, the clock-mouse,” was the answer, “and with my sharp teeth I will gnaw the grape vine in many pieces so you will be free.”

“That will be very kind of you,” said Uncle Wiggily, who was quite tired out with his struggles to get loose.

So Hickory Dickory Dock, with his sharp teeth, gnawed the grape vine, and, in a little while, Uncle Wiggily was loose and all right again.

“Thank you,” said the bunny uncle to the clock-mouse, as he hopped off, and Hickory Dickory Dock went with him, for his leg was all better now. “Thank you very much, nice little clock-mouse.”

“You did me a favor,” said Hickory Dickory Dock, “and now I have done you one, so we are even.” And that’s a good way to be in this world. So, if the ink bottle doesn’t turn pale when it sees the fountain pen jump in the goldfish bowl and swim I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the late scholar.

“Heigh-ho!” cried Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice rabbit gentleman, one morning, as he hopped from bed and went to the window of his hollow-stump bungalow to look out. “Heigh-ho! It will soon be Spring, I hope, for I am tired of Winter.”

Then he went down-stairs, where Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, had his breakfast ready on the table.

Uncle Wiggily ate some cabbage pancakes with carrot maple sugar sprinkled over them, and then as he wiped his whiskers on his red tongue, which he used for a napkin, and as he twinkled his pink nose to see if it was all right, Nurse Jane said:

“Yesterday, Uncle Wiggily, you told me you would like me to make some lettuce cakes to-day; did you not?”

“I did,” answered Uncle Wiggily, sort of slow and solemn like. “But what is the matter, Nurse Jane? I hope you are not going to tell me that you cannot, or will not, make those lettuce cakes.”

“Oh, I’ll make them, all right enough, Wiggy,” the muskrat lady answered, “only I have no lettuce. You will have to go to the store for me.”

“And right gladly will I go!” exclaimed the bunny uncle, speaking like some one in an old-fashioned story book. “I’ll get my automobile out and go at once.”

Uncle Wiggily had not used his machine often that Winter, as there had been so much snow and ice. But now it was getting close to Spring and the weather was very nice. There was no snow in the woods and fields, though, of course, some might fall later.

“It will do my auto good to have me ride in it,” said the bunny uncle. He blew some hot air in the bologna sausage tires, put some talcum powder on the steering-wheel so it would not catch cold, and then, having tickled the whizzicum-whazzicum with a goose feather, away he started for the lettuce store.

It did not take him long to get there, and, having bought a nice head of the green stuff, the bunny uncle started back again for his hollow-stump bungalow.

“Nurse Jane will make some fine lettuce cakes, with clover ice cream cones on top,” he said to himself, as he hurried along in his automobile.

He had not gone very far, and he was about halfway home, when from behind a bush he heard the sound of crying. Now, whenever Uncle Wiggily heard any one crying he knew some one was in trouble, and as he always tried to help those in trouble, he did it this time. Stopping his automobile, he called:

“Who are you, and what is the matter? Perhaps I can help you.”

Out from behind the bush came a boy, a nice sort of boy, except that he was crying.

“Oh, are you Simple Simon?” asked Uncle Wiggily, “and are you crying because you cannot catch a whale in your mother’s water pail?”

“No; I am not Simple Simon,” was the answer of the boy.

“Well, you cannot be Jack Horner, because you have no pie with you, and you’re not Little Boy Blue, because I see you wear a red necktie,” went on the bunny uncle. “Do you belong to Mother Goose at all?”

“Yes,” answered the boy. “I do. You must have heard about me. I am Diller-a-Dollar, a ten o’clock scholar, why do you come so soon? I used to come at ten o’clock, but now I’ll come at noon. Don’t you know me?”

“Ha! Why, of course, I know you!” cried Uncle Wiggily, in his jolly voice, as he put some lollypop oil on the doodle-oodleum of his auto. “But, why are you crying?”

“Because I’m going to be late at school again,” said the boy. “You see of late I have been late a good many mornings, but this morning I got up early, and was sure I would get there before noon.”

“And so you will, if you hurry,” Uncle Wiggily said, looking at his watch, that was a cousin to the clock, up which, and down which, ran Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse. “It isn’t anywhere near noon yet,” went on the rabbit gentleman. “You can almost get to school on time this morning.”

“I suppose I could,” said the boy, “and I got up early on purpose to do that. But now I have lost my way, and I don’t know where the school is. Oh, dear! Boo hoo! I’ll never get to school this week, I fear.”

“Oh, yes, you will!” said Uncle Wiggily, still more kindly. “I’ll tell you what to do. Hop up in the automobile here with me, and I’ll take you to the school. I know just where it is. Sammie and Susie Littletail, my rabbit friends, and Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels, as well as Nannie and Billie Wagtail, the goats, go there. Hop in!”

So Diller-a-Dollar, the late scholar, hopped in the auto, and he and Uncle Wiggily started off together.

“You’ll not be late this morning,” said the bunny uncle. “I’ll get you there just about nine o’clock.”

Well, Uncle Wiggily meant to do it, and he might have, only for what happened. First a hungry dog bit a piece out of one of the bologna sausage tires on the auto wheels, and they had to go slower. Then a hungry cat took another piece and they had to go still more slowly.

A little farther on the tinkerum-tankerum of the automobile, which drinks gasolene, grew thirsty and Uncle Wiggily had to give it a glass of lemonade. This took more time.

And finally when the machine went over a bump the cork came out of the box of talcum powder and it flew in the face of Uncle Wiggily and the late scholar and they both sneezed so hard that the auto stopped.

“See! I told you we’d never get to school,” sadly said the boy. “Oh, dear! And I thought this time teacher would not laugh, and ask me why I came so soon, when I was really late.”

“It’s too bad!” Uncle Wiggily said. “I did hope I could get you there on time. But wait a minute. Let me think. Ha! I have it! We are close to my bungalow. We’ll run there and get in my airship. That goes ever so much faster than my auto, and I’ll have you to school in no time.”

No sooner said than done! In the airship the late scholar and Uncle Wiggily reached school just as the nine o’clock bell was ringing, and so Diller-a-Dollar was on time this time after all. And the teacher said:

“Oh, Diller-a-Dollar, my ten o’clock scholar, you may stand up in line. You used to come in very late, but now you come at nine.”

So the late scholar was not late after all, thanks to Uncle Wiggily, and if the egg beater doesn’t go to sleep in the rice pudding, where it can’t get out to go sleigh-riding with the potato masher, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Baa-Baa, the black sheep.

“My goodness! But it’s cold to-day!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice rabbit gentleman, as he came down to breakfast in his hollow-stump bungalow one morning. “It is very cold.”

“Indeed it is,” said Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as she put the hot buttered cabbage cakes on the table. “If you go out you had better wear your fur coat.”

“I shall,” spoke the bunny uncle. “And I probably shall call on Mother Goose. She asked me to stop in the next time I went past.”

“What for?” Nurse Jane wanted to know.

“Oh, Little Jack Horner hurt his thumb the last time he pulled a plum out of his Christmas pie, and Mother Goose wanted me to look at it, and see if she had better call in Dr. Possum. So I’ll stop and have a look.”

“Well, give her my love,” said Nurse Jane, and Uncle Wiggily promised that he would.

A little later he started off across the fields and through the woods to the place where Mother Goose lived, not far from his own hollow-stump bungalow. Uncle Wiggily had on his fur overcoat, for it was cold. It had been warm the day before, when he had taken Diller-a-Dollar, the ten o’clock scholar, to school, but now the weather had turned cold again.

“Come in!” called Mother Goose, when Uncle Wiggily had tapped with his paw on her door. “Come in!”

The bunny uncle went in, and looked at the thumb of Little Jack Horner, who was playing marbles with Little Boy Blue.

“Does your thumb hurt you much, Jack?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“Yes, I am sorry to say it does. I’m not going to pull any more plums out of Christmas pies. I’m going to eat cake instead,” said Jack Horner.

“Well, I’ll go get Dr. Possum for you,” offered Uncle Wiggily. “I think that will be best,” he remarked to Mother Goose.

Wrapped in his warm fur overcoat, Uncle Wiggily once more started off over the fields and through the woods. He had not gone very far before he heard a queer sort of crying noise, like:

“Baa! Baa! Baa!”

“Ha! That sounds like a little lost lamb,” said the bunny uncle, “only there are no little lambs out this time of year. I’ll take a look. It may be some one in trouble, whom I can help.”

Uncle Wiggily looked around the corner of a stone fence, and there he saw a sheep shivering in the cold, for most of his warm, fleecy wool had been sheared off. Oh! how the sheep shivered in the cold.

“Why, what is the matter with you?” asked Uncle Wiggily, kindly.

“I am c-c-c-c-cold,” said the sheep, shiveringly.

“What makes you cold?” the bunny uncle wanted to know.

“Because they cut off so much of my wool. You know how it is with me, for I am in the Mother Goose book. Listen!

“That’s the way I answered when they asked me if I had any wool,” said Baa-baa.

“And what did they do?” asked the bunny uncle.

“Why they sheared off my fleece, three bags of it. I didn’t mind them taking the first bag full, for I had plenty and it was so warm I thought Spring was coming. And it doesn’t hurt to cut off my fleecy wool, any more than it hurts to cut a boy’s hair. And after they took the first bag full of wool for the master they took a second bag for the man. I didn’t mind that, either. But when they took the third——”

“Then they really did take three?” asked Uncle Wiggily, in surprise.

“Oh, yes, to be sure. Why it’s that way in the book of Mother Goose, you know, and they had to do just as the book says.”

“I suppose so,” agreed Uncle Wiggily, sadly like.

“Well, after they took the third bag of wool off my back the weather grew colder, and I began to shiver. Oh! how cold I was; and how I shivered and shook. Of course if the master and the man, and the little boy who lives in the lane, had known I was going to shiver so, they would not have taken the last bag of wool. Especially the little boy, as he is very kind to me.

“But now it is done, and it will be a long while before my wool grows out again. And as long as it is cold weather I will shiver, I suppose,” said Baa-baa, the black sheep.

“No, you shall not shiver!” cried Uncle Wiggily.

“How can you stop me?” asked the black sheep.

“By wrapping my old fur coat around you,” said the rabbit gentleman. “I have two fur overcoats, a new one and an old one. I am wearing the new one. The old one is at my hollow-stump bungalow. You go there and tell Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy to give it to you. Tell her I said so. Or you can go there and wait for me, as I am going to get Dr. Possum to fix the thumb of Little Jack Horner, who sat in a corner, eating a Christmas pie.”

“You are very kind,” said Baa-baa. “I’ll go to your bungalow and wait there for you.”

So he did, shaking and shivering all the way, but he soon became warm when he sat by Nurse Jane’s fire. And when Uncle Wiggily came back from having sent Dr. Possum to Little Jack Horner, the rabbit gentleman wrapped his old fur coat around Baa-baa, the black sheep, who was soon as warm as toast.

And Baa-baa wore Uncle Wiggily’s old fur coat until warm weather came, when the sheep’s wool grew out long again. So everything was all right, you see.

And now, having learned the lesson that if you cut your hair too short you may have to wear a fur cap to stop yourself from getting cold, we will wait for the next story, which, if the pencil box doesn’t jump into the ink well and get a pail of glue to make the lollypop stick fast to the roller-skates, will be about Uncle Wiggily and Polly Flinders.

“There!” cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, who took care of the hollow-stump bungalow for Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman. “There, it is all finished at last!”

“What’s all finished?” asked the bunny uncle, who was reading the paper in his easy chair near the fire, for the weather was still cold. “I hope you don’t mean you have finished living with me, Nurse Jane? For I would be very lonesome if you were to go away.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll not leave you, Wiggy,” she said. “What I meant was that I had finished making the new dress for Susie Littletail, the rabbit girl.”

“Good!” cried the bunny uncle. “A new dress for my little niece Susie. That’s fine! If you like, Nurse Jane, I’ll take it to her.”

“I wish you would,” spoke the muskrat lady. “I have not time myself. Just be careful of it. Don’t let the bad fox or the skillery-scalery alligator with humps on his ears bite holes in it.”

“I won’t,” promised Uncle Wiggily. So taking the dress, which Nurse Jane had sewed for Susie, over his paw, and with his tall silk hat over his ears, and carrying his red, white and blue-striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch, off Uncle Wiggily started for the Littletail home.

“Susie will surely like her dress,” thought the rabbit gentleman. “It has such pretty colors.” For it had, being pink and blue and red and yellow and purple and lavender and strawberry and lemon and Orange Mountain colors. There may have been other colors in it, but I can think of no more right away.

Uncle Wiggily was going along past Old Mother Hubbard’s house, and past the place where Mother Goose lived, when, coming to a place near a big tree, Uncle Wiggily saw another house. And from inside the house came a crying sound.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What shall I do?” sobbed a voice.

“Ah, ha! More trouble!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I seem to be finding lots of people in trouble lately. Well, now to see who this is!”

Going up to the house, and peering in a window, Uncle Wiggily saw a little girl sitting before a fireplace. And this little girl was crying.

“Hello!” called Uncle Wiggily, in his jolly voice, as he opened the window. “What is the matter? Are you Little Bo Peep, and are you crying because you have lost your sheep?”

“No, Uncle Wiggily,” answered the little girl. “I am crying because I have spoiled my nice new dress, and when my mother comes home and finds it out she will whip me.”

“Oh, no!” cried the bunny uncle. “Your mother will never do that. But who are you?”

“Why, don’t you know? I am little Polly Flinders, I sat among the cinders, warming my pretty little toes. ‘And her mother came and caught her, and she whipped her little daughter, for spoiling her nice new clothes.’

“That’s what it says in the Mother Goose book,” said Polly Flinders, “and, of course, that’s what will happen to me. Oh, dear! I don’t want to be whipped. And I didn’t really spoil quite all my nice new clothes. It’s only my dress, and some hot ashes got on that.”

“Well, that isn’t so bad,” said Uncle Wiggily. “It may be that I can clean it for you.” But when he looked at Polly’s dress he saw that it could not be fixed, for, like Pussy Cat Mole’s best petticoat, Polly’s dress had been burned through with hot coals, so that it was full of holes.

“No, that can’t be fixed, I’m sorry to say,” said Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, dear!” sobbed Polly Flinders, as she sat among the cinders. “What shall I do? I don’t want to be whipped by my mother.”

“And you shall not be,” said the bunny uncle. “Not that I think she would whip you, but we will not give her a chance. See here, I have a new dress that I was taking to Susie Littletail. Nurse Jane can easily make my little rabbit niece another.

“So you take this one, and give me your old one. And when your mother comes she will not see the holes in your dress. Only you must tell her what happened, or it would not be fair. Always tell mothers and fathers everything that happens to you.”

“I will,” promised Polly Flinders.

She soon took off her old dress and put on the new one intended for Susie, and it just fitted her.

“Oh, how lovely!” cried Polly Flinders, looking at her toes.

“And now,” said Uncle Wiggily, “you must sit no more among the cinders.”

“I’ll not,” Polly promised, and she went and sat down in front of the looking-glass, where she could look proudly at the new dress—not too proudly, you understand, but just proud enough.

Polly thanked Uncle Wiggily, who took the old soiled and burned dress to Susie’s house. When the rabbit girl saw the bunny uncle coming she ran to meet him, crying:

“Oh! did Nurse Jane send you with my new dress?”

“She did,” answered Uncle Wiggily, “but see what happened to it on the way,” and he showed Susie the burned holes and all.

“Oh, dear!” cried the little rabbit girl, sadly. “Oh, dear!”

“Never mind,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, kindly, and he told all that had happened. It was a sort of adventure, you see.

“Oh, I’m glad you gave Polly my dress!” said Susie, clapping her paws.

“Nurse Jane shall make you another dress,” promised Uncle Wiggily, and the muskrat lady did. And when the mother of Polly Flinders came home she thought the new dress was just fine, and she did not whip her little daughter. In fact, she said she would not have done so anyhow. So that part of the Mother Goose book is wrong.

And thus everything came out all right, and if the shaving brush doesn’t whitewash the blackboard, so the chalk can’t dance on it with the pencil sharpener, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the garden maid.

“Hey, ho, hum!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, as he stretched up his twinkling, pink nose, and reached his paws around his back to scratch an itchy place. “Ho, hum! I wonder what will happen to me to-day?”

“Are you going out again?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper. “It seems to me that you go out a great deal, Mr. Longears.”

“Well, yes; perhaps I do,” admitted the bunny uncle. “But more things happen to me when I go out than when I stay in the house.”

“And do you like to have things happen to you?” asked Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy.

“When they are adventures I do,” answered the rabbit gentleman. “So here I go off for an adventure.”

Off started the nice, old, bunny uncle, carrying his red, white and blue-striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch—over his shoulder this time. For his pain did not hurt him much, as the sun was shining, so he did not have to limp on the crutch, which Nurse Jane had gnawed for him out of a corn-stalk.

Uncle Wiggily had not gone very far toward the fields and woods before he heard Nurse Jane calling to him.

“Oh, Wiggy! Wiggy, I say! Wait a moment!”

“Yes, what is it?” asked the rabbit gentleman, turning around and looking over his shoulder. “Have I forgotten anything?”

“No, it was I who forgot,” said the muskrat lady housekeeper. “I forgot to tell you to bring me a bottle of perfume. Mine is all gone.”

“All right, I’ll bring you some,” promised Mr. Longears. “It will give me something to do—to go to the perfume store. Perhaps an adventure may happen to me there.”

Once more he was on his way, and soon he reached the perfume store, kept by a nice buzzing bee lady, who gathered sweet smelling perfume, as well as honey, from the flowers in Summer and put it carefully away for the Winter.

“Some perfume for Nurse Jane, eh?” said the bee lady, as the rabbit gentleman knocked on her hollow-tree house. “There you are, Uncle Wiggily,” and she gave him a bottle of the nice scent made from a number of flowers.

“My! That smells lovely!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, as he pulled out the cork, and took a long sniff. “Nurse Jane will surely like that perfume!”

With the sweet scented bottle in his paw, the rabbit gentleman started back toward his hollow-stump bungalow. He had not gone very far before he saw a nurse maid, out in the garden, back of a big house. There was a basket in front of the maid, with some clothes in it, and stretched across the garden was a line, with more clothes on it, flapping in the wind.

“Ha!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “I wonder if that garden maid, hanging up the clothes, wouldn’t like to smell Nurse Jane’s perfume? Nurse Jane will not mind, and perhaps it will be doing that maid a kindness to let her smell something sweet, after she has been smelling washing-soap-suds all morning.”

So the bunny uncle, who was always doing kind things, hopped over to the garden maid, and politely asked:

“Wouldn’t you like to smell this perfume?” and he held out the bottle he had bought of the bee lady.

The garden maid turned around, and said in a sad voice:

“Thank you, Uncle Wiggily. It is very kind of you, I’m sure, and I would like to smell your perfume. But I can’t.”

“Why not?” asked the bunny uncle. “The cork is out of the bottle. See!”

“That may very well be,” went on the garden maid, “but the truth of the matter is that I cannot smell, because a blackbird has nipped off my nose.”

Uncle Wiggily, in great surprise, looked, and, surely enough, a blackbird had nipped off the nose of the garden maid.

“Bless my whiskers!” cried the bunny uncle. “What a thing for a blackbird to do—nip off your nose! Why did he do such an impolite thing as that?”

“Why, he had to do it, because it’s that way in the Mother Goose book,” said the maid. “Don’t you remember? It goes this way:

“That’s the way it was,” said the garden maid.

“Oh, yes, I remember now,” spoke Uncle Wiggily.

“Well, I’m the maid who was in the garden, hanging out the clothes,” said she, “and, as you can see, along came a blackbird and nipped off my nose. That is, you can’t see the blackbird, but you can see the place where my nose ought to be.”

“Yes,” answered Uncle Wiggily, “I can. It’s too bad. That blackbird ought to have his feathers ruffled.”

“Oh, he didn’t mean to be bad,” said the garden maid. “He had to do as it says in the book, and he had to nip off my nose. So that’s why I can’t smell Nurse Jane’s nice perfume.”

Uncle Wiggily thought for a minute. Then he said:

“Just you wait here. I think I can fix it so you can smell as well as ever.”

Then the bunny uncle hurried off through the woods until he found Jimmie Caw-Caw, the big black crow boy.

“Jimmie,” said the bunny uncle, “will you fly off, find the blackbird, and ask him to give back the garden maid’s nose so she can smell perfume?”

“I will,” said Jimmie Caw-Caw, very politely. “I certainly will!”

Away he flew, and, after a while, in the deep, dark part of the woods he found the blackbird, sitting on a tree.

“Please give me back the garden maid’s nose,” said Jimmie, politely.

“Certainly,” answered the blackbird, also politely. “I only took it off in fun. Here it is back. I’m sorry I bothered the garden maid, but I had to, as it’s that way in the Mother Goose book.”

Off to Uncle Wiggily flew Jimmie, the crow boy, with the young lady’s nose, and soon Dr. Possum had fastened it back on the garden maid’s face as good as ever.

“Now you can smell the perfume,” said Uncle Wiggily, and when he held up the bottle the maid said:

“Oh, what a lovely smell!”

So the bunny uncle left a little perfume in a bottle for the garden maid, and then she went on hanging up the clothes, and she felt very happy because she had a nose. So you see how kind Uncle Wiggily and Jimmie were, and Nurse Jane, too, liked the perfume very much.

So if the little girl’s roller-skates don’t run over the pussy’s tail and ruffle it all up so she can’t go to the moving picture party, I’ll tell you next of Uncle Wiggily and the King.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old rabbit gentleman, was sitting in an easy chair in his hollow-stump bungalow, one day, looking out of the window at the blue sky, and he was feeling quite happy. And why should he not be happy?

Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, his muskrat lady housekeeper, had just given him a nice breakfast of cabbage pancakes, with carrot maple sugar tied in a bow-knot in the middle, and Uncle Wiggily had eaten nine. Nine cakes, I mean, not nine bows.

“And now,” said the bunny uncle to himself, “I think I shall go out and take a walk. Perhaps I may have an adventure. Do you want any perfume, or anything like that from the store?” asked Mr. Longears of Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy.

“No, thank you, I think not,” answered the muskrat lady. “Just bring yourself home, and that will be all.”

“Oh, I’ll do that all right,” promised the bunny gentleman. So away he hopped, over the fields and through the woods, humming to himself a little song which went something like this:

Uncle Wiggily felt happier than ever when he had sung this song, but, as he went along a little further, he came, all at once, to a very nice house indeed, out of which floated the sound of a sad voice.

Uncle Wiggily was surprised to hear this, for the house was such a nice one that it seemed no one ought to be unhappy who lived there.

The house was made of gold and silver, with diamond windows, and the chimney was made of a red ruby stone, which, as every one knows, is very expensive. But with all that the sad voice came sailing out of one of the opened diamond windows, and the voice said:

“Oh, dear! It’s gone! I can’t find it! I dropped it and it rolled down a crack in the floor. Now I’ll never get it again. Oh, dear!”

“Well, that sounds like some one in trouble,” said the bunny uncle. “I must see if I cannot help them,” for Uncle Wiggily helped real folk, who lived in fine houses, as well as woodland animals, who lived in hollow trees.

Uncle Wiggily hopped up to the open diamond window of the gold and silver house, with the red ruby chimney, and, poking his nose inside, the rabbit gentleman asked:

“Is there some one here in trouble whom I may have the pleasure of helping?”

“Yes,” answered a voice. “I’m here, and I’m surely in trouble.”

“Who are you, and what is the trouble, if I may ask?” politely went on Uncle Wiggily.

“I am the king,” was the answer. “This is my palace, but, with all that, I am in trouble. Come in.”

In hopped Uncle Wiggily, and there, surely enough, was the king, but he was in the kitchen, down on his hands and knees, looking with one eye through a crack in the floor, which is something kings hardly ever do.

“It’s down there,” he said. “And I can’t get it. I’m too fat to go through the crack.”

“What’s down there?” Uncle Wiggily wanted to know.

“My money,” answered the king. “You may have heard about me,” and he recited this little verse:

The fat man got up off the kitchen floor.

“I’m the king,” he said, taking up his gold and diamond crown from a kitchen chair, where he had put it as he kneeled down, so it would not fall off and be dented. “From Mother Goose, you know; don’t you?”

“Yes, I know,” answered Uncle Wiggily.

“I dare say you’ll find the queen in the parlor eating bread and honey,” went on the king. “At least I saw her start for there with a plate, knife and fork as I was coming here. And, no doubt, the maid is in the garden, where she’ll pretty soon have her nose nipped off by a blackbird.”

“That part happened yesterday,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I was there just after it happened, and I got Jimmie Caw-Caw, the crow boy, to fly after the blackbird and bring back the maid’s nose. She is as well as ever now and can smell all kinds of perfume.”

“Good!” cried the fat king. “You were very kind to help her. I only wish you could help me. But I don’t see how you can. My money, which I was counting, fell out of my hands and dropped down a crack in the floor. I can see it lying down there in the dirt, but I can’t get at it unless I move to one side my gold and silver palace, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t suppose you can move a palace, can you?” And he looked askingly at Uncle Wiggily.

“No, I can’t do that,” said the bunny uncle. “But still I think I can get your money without moving the palace.”

“How?” asked the king.

“Why, I can go outside,” said Mr. Longears, “and with my strong paws, which are just made for digging, I can burrow, or dig, a place through the dirt under your palace-house, crawl in and get what you dropped.”

“Oh, please do!” cried the king.

So Uncle Wiggily did.

Down under the cellar wall of the palace, through the dirt, dug the bunny gentleman, with his strong paws. Pretty soon he was right under the kitchen, and there, just where they had dropped through the crack, were the king’s gold and silver pennies and other pieces of money. Uncle Wiggily picked them up, put them in his pocket and crawled out again.

“There you are, king,” he said. “You have your money back.”

“Oh, thank you ever so much!” cried the king. “I’ll have the cook give you some carrots.” And he did, before he went on counting his money in the kitchen. And this time he stuffed a dish-rag in the crack so no more pennies would fall through.

Thus we see how Uncle Wiggily helped the king, and in the next chapter, if the condensed milk doesn’t jump out of the can and scare the coffee-pot so it drinks tea, I’ll tell you of Uncle Wiggily and the queen.

But that story will have to go in the second part of this book, together with some others, for now we are just halfway through, just as when you cut an orange into two parts.

So, if you are all ready, you may turn the page and get ready for what comes next.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, was hopping along through the woods one day, limping a little on his red, white and blue striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch, for he had some pain, and he was wondering if any adventures would happen to him when, all of a sudden, there came a big puff of wind, and blew off his tall silk hat.

“My goodness me sakes alive, and some rice pudding!” cried the bunny uncle, giving a hop, skip and a jump after his hat. “I had forgotten that this is the first of March, when the wind begins to blow Winter away and blow Spring in its place. No wonder my hat went off!”

He raced after his hat, which was bounding along through the woods, rolling over and over like a boy’s hoop on the sidewalk. At last Uncle Wiggily caught his hat, but, as he was putting it down hard over his ears, along came another puff of wind, and this time blew away his red, white and blue-striped crutch.

“Oh, dear!” cried the bunny uncle. “What a lot of trouble I’m having to-day! I don’t believe any one has as much trouble as I.”

Uncle Wiggily hopped after his crutch, and caught it just as it was about ready to be blown into a bramble briar bush.

“It’s a good thing it didn’t go in there,” he said, “or I’d have been all scratched up getting it out. Oh, dear! I wonder if I am going to have any more trouble! No one has as much as I.”

“Oh, yes they have,” said a little voice in the bramble briar bush. “Yes, they have! I’m in trouble right now.”

“Who are you and what is the trouble?” asked the bunny uncle.

“I am the bee lady who keeps the honey and perfume store,” was the answer. “I was on my way to take some perfume to Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady, and when I tried to fly through this bramble briar bush my wings were caught, and I can’t get out. Isn’t that trouble enough?”

“It certainly is,” answered Uncle Wiggily. “I am sorry you are in trouble, for I know what it means. But I will help you out.”

So he did, very gently loosening the stickery thorns of the bramble briar bushes from the bee lady’s wings.

“Oh, thank you,” she said. “Now, I can fly on with the perfume for Mrs. Wibblewobble. If ever I can help you, or any friends of yours, I shall, Uncle Wiggily.”

“Thank you,” answered the rabbit gentleman. Then, having given the bunny uncle a smell from the little bottle of perfume she carried, the bee lady flew on.

With his tall silk hat and crutch the rabbit gentleman now again went on through the woods, until once more he came to the gold and silver palace-house, with diamond windows, and a chimney made of a red ruby stone.

“Ha! That’s where the king lives, who was in the kitchen, counting out his money,” thought Mr. Longears. “I helped him, and I wonder if there is any one else in the palace who is in need of my help?”

Just then, from one of the open parlor diamond windows, there came a voice saying sadly:

“Oh, dear! It’s all gone! There isn’t a bit left, and what I’m going to do, I don’t know. Oh, dear!”

“That sounds like trouble,” said the bunny uncle. “I’ll see what it is.”

He went closer to the window, and there, in the parlor, he saw a beautiful lady, all dressed in silk and satin and cloth-of-gold, with a diamond crown on her head. In one hand she had a plate, and in the other a knife and fork.

“What is the matter?” asked Uncle Wiggily, politely. “What is gone—the cook? And do you have to do the dishes yourself?”

“No, thank you, the cook hasn’t gone,” said the lady. “I am the queen, as you can see, and I ought to be in the parlor, eating bread and honey. I’m in the parlor right enough, as you can tell by the piano being here. And I have the bread, but there is no honey! There isn’t a bit of honey in the palace for me to eat, so I don’t see how I can make things come out right, as they do in the Mother Goose book. Oh, dear!”

“Don’t worry,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “Perhaps I can mend matters for you.”

“I don’t see how you can,” said the queen. “You haven’t any honey in your pocket; have you?” she asked.

“No,” answered the bunny uncle. “I guess I would be all stuck up, like a piece of fly paper, if I carried honey in my pocket.”

“Then if you have no honey you can’t help me,” said the queen, sadly. “You see the king is in the kitchen, counting out his money. I am in here, and I ought to be eating honey. And the maid is in the garden, hanging out the clothes——”

“I know all about that, and all about her nose,” said Uncle Wiggily, with a smile. “I helped the king get back his money, I helped the maid get back her nose, and now I am going to help you get your honey.”

“Oh, how good of you!” cried the queen, who felt like hugging Uncle Wiggily, only queens do not do such things, you know. “And I really need the honey, for I am hungry. But how can you get it?” the queen asked.

“I’ll show you,” answered the rabbit gentleman. Then, going to the open window, he made a noise like a flower, and called:

“Mrs. Bee! Mrs. Bee! Will you do me a favor now? You promised you would, and now is your chance. Will you do me a favor?”

“Yes, I will,” answered a buzzing voice, and along flew the bee lady, whom Uncle Wiggily had helped out of the briar bush. “What is it you wish?” she buzzed.

“Some honey for the queen to eat in the parlor,” spoke the bunny uncle. “She hasn’t any, and she must have some to be like the story in the Mother Goose book, or things will not come out right. The queen needs honey.”

“She shall have some at once,” buzzed Mrs. Bee. Away she flew and pretty soon she came back with a lot of honey.

“Oh, thank you, and you, too, Uncle Wiggily,” cried the queen, as she sat in the parlor and ate the sweet stuff. “Now everything is all right.”

And so it was, Uncle Wiggily having made it so. And if the clothes line doesn’t twist itself in and out among the pickets of the fence like a carpenter’s shaving and try to play hop-scotch with the rose bush, I’ll tell you next about the bunny gentleman and the ding-dong-bell pussy.

Mother Goose, the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and Old Mother Hubbard hurried one day across the field and through the woods, to the hollow-stump bungalow of Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman. Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, looking out of the hollow-stump window, saw them.

“My goodness, Uncle Wiggily!” cried Nurse Jane. “Oh! Look who’s coming this way. Company! Oh, my! And my shoes not buttoned! Oh, dear!”

The bunny uncle stepped to the window beside the muskrat lady.

“They’re coming here,” said Mr. Longears. “Mother Goose, Mrs. Hubbard and the Shoe Lady. You aren’t giving a surprise party, are you, Nurse Jane, that they are coming to?”

“No, indeed,” answered Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy. “Though to see the three of them coming this way is a surprise to me. Something must be the matter. See how worried they look.”

“Trouble, I suppose,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Well, if they are in trouble it will give me pleasure to help them out. Open the door, Nurse Jane.”

“Why, they can’t get in here,” said Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy. “Our little hollow-stump bungalow is too small for Mother Hubbard, Mother Goose and the Shoe Lady, or even one of them.”

“So it is,” agreed Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll have to go outside to talk to them,” and he did, politely hopping through the hollow-stump window.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” cried Old Mother Hubbard. “Oh, dear!”

“Such trouble!” exclaimed the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, but who I shall call the Shoe Lady, for short, “Oh, such trouble!”

“It’s Pussy!” said Mother Goose. “She’s gone!”

“Gone?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Gone? Who is Pussy?”

“Why, you know,” said Mother Goose. “Pussy is a cousin to Fuzzo, Wuzzo and Muzzo, the three little kittens, who lost their mittens.”

“Oh, yes, to be sure,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I remember! So Pussy has gone; has she? What happened to her?”

“That’s what we don’t know, and what we came to you to have you find out,” said Mother Goose. “You see, Pussy—that’s her first name, her last one is Mew—Pussy Mew came on a little visit to Mrs. Purr, who is her aunt, and the mother of the three little kittens who lost their mittens.”

“Oh, yes, I remember!” said Uncle Wiggily.

“Well, Pussy is lost,” spoke the Shoe Lady. “She went out to the store for Mrs. Purr while Fuzzo, Wuzzo and Muzzo were taking their tail-chasing lesson, and Pussy did not come back.”

“What did she go to the store after?” Uncle Wiggily wanted to know.

“A yeast cake,” answered Mother Hubbard. “But the yeast cake didn’t come back, either.”

“Not having any legs, I don’t see how it could,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But what is it you want me to do, ladies?” he asked, making a polite bow.

“Find Pussy Mew,” said Mother Goose. “You were so clever at helping the king and queen and the maid in the garden hanging out the clothes, when along came a blackbird that nipped off her nose, that I’m sure you can find Pussy for us. We’re really worried about her. Please find her.”

“I’ll try,” promised Uncle Wiggily. So in a little while off he started, limping along on his red, white and blue tall silk hat, with his barber-pole rheumatism crutch on his head. Oh, no! excuse me, if you please—I mean he had his crutch under his paw and his hat on his head.

Over the fields and through the woods went Uncle Wiggily until, pretty soon, he came to the hollow-stump school where the lady mouse taught the animal children their lessons. The bell was ringing, for it was time for the children to run out to play at recess.

“Ha! I wonder if Pussy Mew could have gone to school, forgetting to come home with the yeast cake,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll inquire.”

He asked the lady mouse teacher, but she said that Pussy was not in school, so Uncle Wiggily hurried on, looking all through the woods and over the fields. But no Pussy did he find until, all at once, as he came near a well, he felt thirsty for a drink of water.

“Oh, how I wish I had a drink!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I wonder if I could get one.”

He went to the edge of the well, but it was an old one, and there was no rope or bucket by which water could be pulled up. Then the old rabbit gentleman saw something shining brightly down at the bottom of the well, and he called out:

“Is any one down there who could give me a drink of water?”

“Yes, I am down here,” was the answer, “but I cannot give you a drink of water for I cannot get up myself.”

“Who are you?” asked Uncle Wiggily, surprised like.

Just then the school bell rang again, and a voice said:

“Only that last part isn’t right,” the voice went on, “for Big Johnnie Stout hasn’t come to pull me out. But I’m in the well, as you can tell by the ding-dong bell. Oh, dear! I don’t know what to do. I want so much to get out.”

“I’ll help you out, Pussy,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “I have been looking all over for you. But if you are in the well how is it that you did not sink to the bottom?”

“Because I have with me a yeast cake that I went to the store to get,” was the answer. “The yeast cake makes bread light, so it will rise, and it made me light, so I could rise to the top of the water.”

“Good!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “It was the shiny tinfoil of the yeast cake I saw at the bottom of the well. I’ll soon have you out now, Pussy.”

He gave a jump over to a wild grape vine, gnawed off a piece with his strong teeth, and then, using the grape vine as a rope, he lowered it down into the well. Pussy took hold of it with her claws and paws, putting the yeast cake in one ear, and Uncle Wiggily easily pulled her out. She was wet, but not hurt at all.

“Oh, thank you, Uncle Wiggily,” Pussy Mew said. “So it was you, and not Johnnie Stout, who pulled me out?”

“Of that there is no doubt,” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “But did Johnnie Green push you in?”

“No, I stumbled and fell in,” answered Pussy. “Everything about me in the Mother Goose story is wrong except the part like ‘ding-dong bell, Pussy’s in the well.’ I really was in.”

Then Pussy hurried on to her aunt’s house with the yeast cake, and all was well. And Mother Goose was very thankful to Uncle Wiggily for having helped the little cat, who, ever after that was called the “ding-dong-bell pussy.”

So in the next chapter, if the piano music doesn’t go to sleep in the bread box, where the phonograph can’t find it to play with, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the Shoe Lady.

“Where are you going, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, who kept house for Mr. Longears, the rabbit gentleman. “Where are you going this fine day?”

“To the store,” answered the bunny uncle.

“To the store? Why, I don’t want anything,” spoke Nurse Jane. “You are always so kind, going to the store whenever I need anything, but nothing is needed for the hollow-stump bungalow to-day.”

“I am going to the store for myself,” Uncle Wiggily said. “I am going to buy a new pair of shoes.”

So off he hopped, leaning on his red, white and blue-striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch, over the fields and through the woods until he came to the shoe store.

“A pair of shoes? Certainly,” said the monkey-doodle gentleman who kept the store. “Will you have high shoes or low shoes?”

“Well, as it is near Spring I’ll get low shoes,” Uncle Wiggily said. “They will be cooler if I should happen to go down to the Asbury Park ocean board walk.”

“Ties, we call them, instead of low shoes, but it is all the same,” went on the monkey-doodle. “Here you are.”

He brought out a pair of low shoes, or ties, but, when Uncle Wiggily tried to get them on, his feet would not go into them.

“I see—too tight,” said the monkey-doodle. “I will put a little talcum powder in the shoes and your foot will then easily slip in.”

But, even with the talcum powder, Uncle Wiggily’s paws would not slip in.

“I must use a shoe-horn,” said the monkey.

“Is a shoe-horn something to play on?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“No, it is something to make a shoe slip on easily,” said the monkey-doodle. He brought out a smooth, shiny piece of tin, like a big tablespoon without a handle. Holding this against his heel, Uncle Wiggily could easily slip his foot into his new shoe. Soon he had them both on, and they fitted him well.

“Are they too tight?” asked the monkey-doodle, as the bunny gentleman stepped around the store, practicing.

“No, they’re just right,” said Uncle Wiggily. “They go on a bit hard, but once I have put them on with the shoe-where the shoe-horn they are very nice. I’ll take them.”

“And you may have some talcum powder and the shoe-horn to take with you, to put your shoes on easily whenever you wish,” said the monkey. For you know Uncle Wiggily pulled the shoe-horn out of his shoe, once he had his foot in. They couldn’t both be there at the same time, you see.

Away hopped the rabbit gentleman in his new shoes and with the shoe-horn and the slippery-sliding talcum powder in his pocket.

“Well, now I have my new shoes I wonder if I will meet with an adventure to-day?” thought Uncle Wiggily, as he hopped on. And he did. I’ll tell you about it.

Pretty soon he came to a great, big shoe, standing in the middle of the woods. The shoe had a roof over it, with a chimney sticking out of the top. There was a door to the shoe, and windows. In fact, it was a house, made out of a great, big shoe which a giant used to wear.

“Ha! This is where the Old Woman lives,” said Uncle Wiggily. “The Shoe Lady. I wonder if she is at home?”

He was going to knock on the door and ask how all the children were, when, from inside the shoe there came the sound of crying; children crying; many of them.

“Ha! I wonder if that means trouble?” asked Uncle Wiggily of himself. “I had better see if I can do anything to help.”

He knocked on the door, and the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, or Shoe Lady, as I call her for short, opened it.

“Is anything the matter?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “I heard crying.”

“Of course,” spoke the Shoe Lady, “the children always cry when I whip them. Don’t you know how it is in the Mother Goose book:

“That’s what happened,” said the Shoe Lady.

“Well, er—excuse me—but, that is, do you think it just right to whip them ALL?” asked Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “Might not at least one of them have been good?”

“Oh, bless your tall hat!” exclaimed the Shoe Lady, with a laugh. “I don’t really whip them, you know. That part of the verse is wrong. I only make believe to whip them—pretend, you know, so as to make it as near like the book as I can.”

“But I heard crying,” said Uncle Wiggily.

“Yes, but it was only make-believe crying, just like the pretended whipping,” laughed the Shoe Lady. “I wouldn’t for the world hurt one of the children, even though I have so many I don’t know what to do.”

Uncle Wiggily was glad to hear that, and he was just hopping on, when up came running a little boy.

“Oh, take me in! Take me in!” he cried. “I want my make-believe whipping. I want to make-believe cry, have my broth, without any bread, and go to bed.”

“Why, Toodles!” exclaimed the Shoe Lady, looking at him in surprise. “I did not know you were out. You stayed too late at your play. There are so many children here now I don’t believe there is room to get you in. After the children eat their supper they swell up, and the shoe house is hardly large enough for them,” she said to Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, I must get in,” cried Toodles. “I must!”

“Well, I’ll try,” said the Shoe Lady. She and Uncle Wiggily tried, but the shoe was so full of children that not another one could get in. They pushed and pulled and shoved and hauled, but poor Toodles could not get in.

“Oh, dear! I don’t know what to do,” said the lady, who lived in a shoe. “I guess Toodles will have to sleep out in the woods to-night.”

“No! Wait! I have it!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “When my foot would not go in my new tight shoe the monkey put talcum powder in it and used a shoe-horn. I’ll do that to Toodles.” And so he did. And when the little boy was sprinkled with sweet smelling talcum powder, and when the shiny, slippery shoe-horn was slipped into the top of the crowded shoe, in on that slid Toodles as nicely as you please, and everything was all right. There’s always room for one more, even in a shoe, you know.

“Thank you, Uncle Wiggily,” said the Shoe Lady, and then she gave Toodles his make-believe whipping, he made believe cry, he ate his real broth and went to his real bed. And that’s where you must go if it’s time.

But if the butter doesn’t slide off the slice of bread, and go coasting down the cake plate hill with a bun that ought to be sitting beside the custard, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Jack-be-Nimble.

“Uncle Wiggily! Uncle Wiggily!” called Sammie Littletail, the little rabbit boy, one Saturday morning, as he hopped up to the hollow-stump bungalow, where the nice, old bunny uncle lived. “Come on out and play, Uncle Wiggily. Please do!”

“Oh, hop away, Sammie!” called Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, looking out of the kitchen window. “Here, take this cabbage jam tart and run away. Uncle Wiggily can’t bother to play with you to-day.”

“I haven’t any one else to play with,” said Sammie. “Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels, are taking their nut-gnawing lesson, and Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow, the puppies, are taking their bone-gnawing lessons.”

“Haven’t you any lessons?” asked Nurse Jane.

“No. I’ve done mine. I had to practice jumping a little. But there’s no school, as it’s Saturday, and I do want some one to play with. My sister Susie has gone off with Lulu and Alice Wibblewobble, the ducks, and anyhow I don’t want to play with girl animals. Won’t Uncle Wiggily come out?”

“No, Sammie. Here, take this carrot cookie and hop along,” said Nurse Jane.

“Wait a minute,” spoke another voice, and Uncle Wiggily himself went out on the back stoop. “What is it you want, Sammie?”

“He wants you to come out and play with him!” cried Nurse Jane. “The idea!”

“Oh, I’ll come,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “I haven’t much to do, and perhaps we may have an adventure together. Come on, Sammie, we’ll go off in the woods, and we’ll play.”

So the old gentleman rabbit and his little bunny nephew hopped off in the woods together, and soon were having a fine time, scurrying in among the dried leaves, and hiding behind old logs and stumps.

“I wonder if there is any new cabbage growing around here?” said Sammie, after a bit. “I’m hungry.”

“It is too soon for cabbage yet,” answered Uncle Wiggily. “It will not be Spring for several weeks. Nor are there any new carrots to be had. But pretty soon we’ll pass a lollypop store, and you may have a lettuce flavored one.”

“That will be nice—thank you,” said Sammie.

“Did you do your jumping lesson to-day?” asked the old gentleman rabbit, after a bit.

“Yes,” said Sammie. “I practiced half an hour.”

“Let me see how well you can jump,” spoke the bunny uncle. “I used to be a pretty good jumper when I was young.”

So Sammie jumped from one stump, far over a log, to another.

“Fine!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “That’s better than I can do, but I’ll try.”

He did try, and, though he could not leap as far as Sammie had done, Mr. Longears did very well. If it had not been for his rheumatism he could have done better.

He and Sammie jumped about for some time, and all at once they were surprised to hear a voice saying:

“Oh, dear! I wish I could jump as far as that. But I don’t believe I shall ever be able to. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

“Ha! That sounds like trouble,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Who are you and where are you?”

“I’m Jack, and I’m behind this big stone,” was the answer, and out stepped a boy.

“Ha! I thought at first it might be Jackie Bow Wow,” spoke Uncle Wiggily.

“No; I am another Jack,” said the boy. “I’m one of Mother Goose’s friends.”

“Are you Jack Sprat?” Sammie wanted to know, “who could eat no fat?”

But still the boy did not look like that Jack.

“I’ll tell you who I am,” the boy said. “I’m Jack-be-Nimble, Jack-be-Quick, Jack jump over the candlestick.”

“Oh, now I remember,” spoke Uncle Wiggily. “How do you do, Jack-be-Nimble?”

“But the trouble is I can’t do it,” went on Jack.

“Can’t do what?” asked Sammie Littletail.

“I can’t be nimble and jump over the candlestick,” was the answer. “I’ve tried and tried. But it seems of no use. Every time I jump I either hit the candle, and put it out, or I come down ker-flunk! in it, and get my shoes all grease. Mother Goose says I ought to be ashamed of myself. If I can’t jump over the candlestick, I can’t be in her book, she says, and Oh, dear! I don’t want to be put out of the nice book.”

“That’s too bad,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Now, Jack, I’ll tell you what to do. You watch Sammie and me jump, and perhaps that will teach you how. Watch us. Come on, Sammie, we must jump some more to teach Jack.”

So the old rabbit gentleman and the little rabbit boy jumped about on the soft, dried leaves in the wood. Jack watched them, and then he tried. Of course, having only two legs, he could not leap as far as could the rabbits, with four. But still Jack did very well.

“Now, come here every day to the woods,” said Uncle Wiggily, “and we will give you a jumping lesson. Don’t say anything to Mother Goose about it, and you will soon give her a nice surprise by jumping over the candlestick easily some day. I once took dancing lessons from a waltzing mouse lady without saying anything to Nurse Jane about it, and my! how surprised she was when I did the fox trot.”

“I’ll come,” promised Jack-be-Nimble. And he did. Every day for a week, he took jumping lessons secretly in the woods, of Uncle Wiggily and Sammie, until finally Jack was a very good jumper, indeed. Then one day Old Mother Goose said:

“Well, Jack, I fear it is of no use. You can’t jump over the candlestick, as you ought to do to be in my book, so you’ll have to go out. I’ll get the cow, who leaped over the moon, to jump for me.”

“Oh, please give me one more chance!” begged Jack. “Please!”

Mother Goose kindly did so, and lo! and behold! when next he tried, Jack-be-Nimble jumped over the candlestick as easily as anything. Away over it he jumped and came down on the other side.

“Why, Jack! Where did you learn to jump so well?” asked Mother Goose, in great surprise.

“Uncle Wiggily and Sammie taught me,” he answered. And ever after that nimble Jack had no trouble.

And if the apple pie doesn’t go out skating with the jam tart, and forget to come in to supper, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Tommie Tinker’s dog.

“Uncle Wiggily, here’s a letter for you,” called Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, to the rabbit gentleman, one morning, as he sat in the easy chair in his hollow-stump bungalow. “The postman bird just left it as he flew past.”

“A letter for me!” exclaimed the bunny uncle, as he opened and read it. “That’s nice. It’s from Grandfather Goosey Gander. He wants me to come over and play checkers with him. He’s so lonesome.”

“But you can’t go!” cried Nurse Jane, tying her tail up in a knot, for she was going to sweep and dust, and she did not want to step on herself. “You can’t go, because you said your rheumatism hurt you so.”

“Oh, I guess I can manage to get over to see Grandpa by limping on the nice red, white and blue-striped rheumatism crutch, which you so kindly gnawed for me out of a corn-stalk,” spoke Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll try, anyhow, for I haven’t seen Grandpa Goosey in nearly a week. I dare say I can get over there all right. It’s a nice day.”

“Well, I wish you wouldn’t go,” said Nurse Jane, slowly, making her whiskers dance up and down. “I’m sure something will happen.”

“Oh, nonsensicalness!” laughed Uncle Wiggily, as he went out of the bungalow. Over the fields and through the woods he roamed, and he had to rest several times on his crutch, for the rheumatism hurt him more than he thought it would.

“But I’ll get there all right,” he said. No sooner had he spoken, however, than all at once his crutch slid on a piece of slippery-elm bark, and Uncle Wiggily fell down. He did not hurt himself much, for he sat down on a pile of soft, dried leaves. But when the bunny uncle arose, and tried to walk on his crutch, he could not, as it was cracked and splintered.

“If I lean my weight on it the crutch will break,” said Uncle Wiggily, sadly, “and I can’t walk without leaning on it. Oh, dear! What shall I do?”

Then, as he stood there in the woods, he heard a voice calling:

Uncle Wiggily looked off among the trees, and, surely enough, along came a traveling tinker, with a box over his shoulder and a little fire in a tin pot in his hand. Beside him walked a little boy who had a little dog.

“Oh, daddy! Look at the rabbit gentleman!” cried the little boy.

“I see him,” said the tinker. “He is Uncle Wiggily Longears, if I am not mistaken. Are you not?” he asked, politely.

“I am,” answered the bunny uncle. “And I am in great trouble. I have splintered and cracked my crutch and I can’t limp along on it to get to Grandpa Goosey’s house.”

“Oh, I can easily fix that for you,” said the kind tinker, and he did, fastening a strong piece of tin around the broken part of Uncle Wiggily’s crutch so it was as good as ever.

Then the rabbit gentleman thanked the nice tinker man and hopped on, and the tinker and his little boy, whose name was Tommie, and the little boy’s dog, whose name was Bow-Wow-Wow, went on their way, the tinker singing his funny song.

Uncle Wiggily reached Grandpa Goosey’s house all right, and he and the goose gentleman had fun playing checkers. And when it was time for Uncle Wiggily to hop back to his hollow-stump bungalow Grandpa Goosey gave him a fine, large bone, with nice meat on it.

“Give that to Mrs. Bow Wow for her little puppy dog boys, Jackie and Peetie,” said the goose gentleman.

“I will, thank you,” said Uncle Wiggily.

The rabbit gentleman was hopping along through the woods on his way home when, all at once, he heard some one crying.

“Ha! That sounds like trouble,” he said. “I was in trouble a little while ago about my crutch and the tinker helped me. Now, I must try to help some one in my turn. That’s only fair.”

Uncle Wiggily looked around the corner of a stump and saw the tinker’s little boy, Tommie, sitting on a log and crying very hard.

“Why, Tommie! What’s the matter?” asked the bunny uncle.

“Oh, dear! Boo hoo!” cried Tommie. “My nice dog is lost, and I can’t find him. And I must have him, you know, or else I can’t be in Mother Goose’s book. My dog and I belong there, you see.”

“I see,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “But how did your dog get lost?”

“Oh, I was helping my father mend some umbrellas for Old King Cole,” said Tommie, “and, when we weren’t looking, my dog ran off in the woods. I guess he must be lost there, for he hasn’t come back. My father, Mr. Tinker, went to look for him, and so did I, but I hurt my toe and I can’t look any more; and—Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

“There, there! Don’t cry any more,” said the nice bunny uncle. “I’ll go look for your pet dog for you. Just you wait here. Your father was kind to me, so I want to be kind to you.”

Uncle Wiggily went off through the woods, looking here, there and everywhere and pretty soon he heard behind a tree some one saying:

“Bow! Wow! Wow!”

“Ha! Whose dog art thou?” asked Uncle Wiggily, quickly.

“Little Tommie Tinker’s dog, Bow! Wow! Wow!” came the answer, and out from under a berry bush ran the lost dog, wagging his tail.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” he begged. “Can you take me to Tommie? I’ve been looking everywhere for him, and just now I smelled the nice meat bone you carry and I ran out of the bush to see who had it. Oh, I’m so glad I found you!”

“And I’m glad, too,” said the bunny uncle. “And Tommie will be glad when he sees you. Come alone, doggie, I’ll take you to him. It’s a good thing I had this bone, which you smelled, or I might never have found you.”

Then Uncle Wiggily gave Little Tommie Tinker’s dog some meat from Grandpa Goosey Gander’s bone, and took the little dog to Tommie and Mr. Tinker, who had come back without having found Bow-Wow-Wow. You can just imagine how glad every one was that everything had come out all right, so Tommie could stay in the Mother Goose book, and the little dog was glad also.

Then Uncle Wiggily hopped along home, Tommie Tinker went on his way, and in the next chapter, if our automobile doesn’t run off the sidewalk into a candy store, chasing after a lollypop, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and Mary’s little lamb.

One day Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, was looking around the hollow-stump bungalow, behind pictures, under the piano, in corners and everywhere.

“What is the matter?” asked Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, “have you lost something, Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy?”

“No,” Nurse Jane answered. “I was just looking to see how much house-cleaning I must do. It will soon be Spring, and the bungalow must be made nice and clean, ready for Summer. There is quite a lot of dust behind the pictures and under the piano.”

“Bungalow-cleaning!” said Uncle Wiggily, sort of sad and solemn like. “I know what that means. No meals on time. No place to sit down, no place to hang your hat—nothing at all. I suppose I had better be out of the way when you turn my bungalow upside down to clean it.”

“I suppose you had,” agreed Nurse Jane. “Still, there is no hurry. I won’t start cleaning until to-morrow, or next day. But if you are going out now you might bring me something from the store.”

“What?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“A scrubbing brush and a cake of soap,” answered the muskrat lady. “I’ll need them to clean the floors.”

“You shall have them,” promised Uncle Wiggily. Then off he started with his tall silk hat and his red, white and blue-striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch that Nurse Jane had gnawed for him out of a corn-stalk, and which Tommie Tinker’s father had mended for him, as I told you in the story before this one.

“I wonder if I shall have any adventures to-day?” thought the bunny uncle, as he hopped and skipped along through the woods. “I haven’t had one since I found Tommie Tinker’s dog.”

But Mr. Longears reached the store without anything having happened to him, and, buying the cake of soap and the scrubbing brush, back he started for his hollow-stump bungalow.

“Nurse Jane said there was no hurry,” spoke the rabbit gentleman to himself, “but I want to get the house-cleaning over with as soon as I can. So I’ll hurry back with the soap and brush.”

All of a sudden, and just as Mr. Longears was wondering if he would have time to call on Nannie and Billie Wagtail, the goat children, he heard a rustling in the bushes, and a voice said:

“Oh, dear! However did it happen? Oh, how too bad it is! You’re nothing at all like Mother Goose’s book says you should be. Oh, whatever am I to do?”

Uncle Wiggily looked around the corner of a tree, and there he saw a little girl, and beside her stood a little lamb, as black as a coal, or a barrel of tar. I don’t know which is blacker.

“Ha! This looks like trouble,” whispered Uncle Wiggily. Then: “That surely is Mary,” he said, out loud.

“Yes, I’m Mary,” spoke the little girl, “and I know you. Jack Horner told me about you, and how you helped him pull his thumb out of his plum pie. I wish you could help me.”

“What is the matter?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll help you if I can.”

“It’s him,” said Mary, pointing to the little baby sheep. “You know how it goes in the book:

“Yes, I know that,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But this can’t be your lamb. Instead of being white as snow, he’s black—as black as any crow.”

“That’s just the trouble!” said Mary, with tears in her eyes. “Oh, Lambie! How did you get your nice white coat so black?” she asked. “You can’t follow me to school that way; you know you can’t.”

“Ba-aa! No, I suppose I can’t,” spoke the lamb, sort of sad and lonesome like. “I didn’t mean to do it, but I went past a place where some men were cleaning out a chimney and the black soot blew from it all over me. I’m as sorry about it as you are.”

“It is too bad,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But nothing is so bad that it might not be worse.”

“This will be worse before it is better,” said Mary. “I suppose the only thing to do now is to take my lamb to the barber’s, who shaves a pig, and makes a wig. The barber can cut off the top part of the lamb’s fleecy wool and get down to the nice, white part. But if I do that I’ll be late for school. And the lamb must follow me there, you see, or it won’t be like the book. Oh, Lambkin! why did you do it?”

“I—I’m sorry,” said Mary’s little lamb. “But, please, don’t have my wool cut off. It’s too cold this weather. I’d shiver.”

“I must,” said Mary. “To make you white as snow, you know. I’ll have to have your wool cut.”

“No! you won’t have to do that!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I know something better than that. Soot is only black dirt. It will wash off with soap and water. And, see here! I have some soap for Nurse Jane’s bungalow-cleaning and a scrubbing brush. Come on, Mary. We’ll find some water and give the lamb’s coat a good scrubbing with soap suds. We’ll see what that will do.”

“Oh, I’m afraid we’ll never get him clean,” sadly said Mary; “but it is very good of you to think of it, Uncle Wiggily.”

They found a nice little brook, and leading the lamb to it, Uncle Wiggily rolled up his sleeves and with the soap and scrubbing brush began to wash the black soot out of the fleecy wool of Mary’s little lamb.

Away and away scrubbed the bunny uncle, making a great suddsy lather. He rubbed it well into the fluffy wool. Then, when the soap suds were washed out, why, Mary’s lamb’s fleece was as white as snow! just as it ought to be.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” cried Mary. “How good you are! Now my little lamb can follow me to school, no matter if it is against the rule. Thank you!”

Then away she ran, and the lamb followed after her, and Uncle Wiggily, pleased that he had done a kindness, took the rest of the soap and the scrubbing brush to Nurse Jane.

And if the man painting our house doesn’t put red, green and purple stripes around it to make it look like a moving picture going to the circus, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Peter Piper.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, was hopping along across a green field. The field was not very green, but was just beginning to show a little green grass and clover, for, as yet, Spring had not fully arrived.

“But still I may find a few green things growing that I can eat or take to Sammie and Susie Littletail, the bunny children,” thought Mr. Longears. So on and on he hopped. The sun was shining, it was not very cold, and Uncle Wiggily felt happy because his rheumatism did not pain him.

“And when Summer comes it will not hurt me at all,” he said.

The rabbit gentleman was wondering whether or not he would have an adventure that day, when, all at once, he saw, climbing over the fence, a boy dressed in a green suit, wearing a red cap and with blue shoes on his feet.

“Ha! He is a funny looking chap!” thought the bunny uncle. “I think he must be one of Mother Goose’s friends. I’ll ask him.” And he did.

“Oh, how do you do, Uncle Wiggily?” asked the queer boy. “Yes, indeed, I’m one of the many children of Mother Goose, to whom you have been so kind. I’m Peter Piper.”

“Are you any relation to Tom-Tom, the Piper’s son?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“Yes, I’m his cousin. But I had nothing to do with taking the pig. Tom-Tom did that himself. But, if you please, I have a riddle for you to guess.”

“A riddle? Come, that’s good! I like riddles. Tell it to me.”

Then the queer boy stood up straight and recited this:

“Oh, my!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “That’s a hard one. Let me see now. ‘If Peter Pepper pipped a pick of peckled Pipers——!’”

“Oh, no! You have it wrong,” said Peter, smiling. “Try once more. Say it after me: ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.’”

Uncle Wiggily tried again:

“Pickled Peter pipped a pep of Piperd pikers——”

“Oh, dear, no! Wrong again!” laughed Peter. “Now, once more. Say the last part first and perhaps it will come easier to you.”

So Uncle Wiggily said:

“Where is the pop of pickered Peters picker Piper pepped?”

“I—I’m afraid you can’t say it,” said Peter, gently.

“I’m afraid so myself,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I shan’t try again. It makes my tongue all twisted and hurts my funny bone. I give up. What’s the answer? Where are the peppers?”

“Here they are!” exclaimed Peter, and from behind his back he held out a peck of pickled peppers. “That’s the only kind you can pick this time of year,” he went on. “I’m taking them to Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady. She mixes them with corn-meal and fries them.”

“I’ll go with you,” spoke Uncle Wiggily. “I haven’t seen Alice and Lulu and Jimmie Wibblewobble in some time.”

So the bunny uncle and Peter Piper picked their way across the field toward the duck lady’s house. More than once Uncle Wiggily tried to say the riddle, but his tongue grew more and more twisted until he was walking sideways instead of frontwards. So he gave it up.

He and Peter Piper had not gone very far before Peter’s shoe lace came loose and he stooped down behind a big stone to tie it—tie the lace, I mean, not the stone. And while he was doing this along came the bad old fox, who had not bothered Uncle Wiggily in some time.

“Ah, ha!” cried the fox, showing his teeth. “This is the time I have you, Mr. Longears! I was just wondering what I would eat for dinner, but now I know. It shall be you!”

“Me?” asked Uncle Wiggily, curious like and wondering.

“Yes, you. Get ready for dinner! My dinner!” snarled the fox.

Uncle Wiggily thought quickly. He did not want to be a dinner for the fox, so he said:

“Before you eat would you not like to guess a riddle?”

“Yes,” said the fox, “I would. What is it?”

“And do you promise not to eat me until you guess it?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“I do,” said the fox. “But that will not save you, for I can guess any riddle that ever was,” and he fluffed up his tail, proud like and saucy.

“Then guess this,” said Uncle Wiggily, and now he had no trouble saying Peter Piper picked the peck of pickled peppers. “Where is the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?” suddenly asked Uncle Wiggily of the fox. The bad animal thought for a second and then he said:

“If Peter pickled pecked a pick of pipered pickles. A pick of Petered Pipers——”

“Oh, no!” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “You’re a bit twisted. Try again.” The fox did so.

“If Papper Peter pecked a pit of piddled poppers——”

“Worse than ever,” said the bunny uncle. “I think you will not find it as easy as you thought. Once more, please, and try it a bit slower.”

The fox growled, and said:

“A pick of peppered Peters did peckle pickle—— Oh, I can’t guess your old riddle!” snarled the fox. “I’m going to eat you anyhow! What do I care about the peckled pickers?” and he made a jump for Uncle Wiggily to grab the bunny uncle.

“Eat him? You going to eat Uncle Wiggily? Oh, no! No, you’re not!” cried Peter Piper, jumping out from behind the rock. “Mother Goose doesn’t want Uncle Wiggily hurt. Be off with you!”

And with that Peter threw a pickled pepper at the fox. It struck him on the nose, and made him sneeze and turn a somersault, and before he could get straightened out Uncle Wiggily and Peter Piper had run away to the duck house.

So Mrs. Wibblewobble got the pickled peppers; that is, all but the one Peter threw at the fox, and Uncle Wiggily at last learned how to say the hard riddle-verse without tying himself in a knot. And if you can recite it, fast, without wrinkling your nose, you are doing well.

And if the candlestick doesn’t try to beat the carpet, and get dust in the eyes of the potatoes when they dance in the frying pan, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the moon-man.

“Did you hear the news, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as she sat down one evening in the dining-room of the hollow-stump bungalow, where the rabbit gentleman was eating his supper of lettuce salad, with carrot sauce sprinkled on.

“News! What news?” asked the bunny uncle, reaching for a slice of carrot bread. “Is some one going to have a surprise party and invite us to dance?”

“That’s partly it,” Nurse Jane answered. “Nannie Wagtail, the little goat girl, was going to have a party, but she is ill, and the party will not be given.”

“Nannie ill? That’s too bad,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “I’ll go over to see her after I have my supper. She may need cheering up a bit. Yes, I’ll go see her.”

So after he had finished eating Uncle Wiggily put on his tall silk hat that was like a piece of the stovepipe and away he went, over the fields and through the woods, to the house where the little goat girl lived with her brother Billie and her Uncle Butter, who posted circus pictures on barns and fences.

It was getting dark, but Uncle Wiggily was not afraid, for he knew the moon would soon rise above the tree tops and make a good light.

And on his way to Nannie’s the bunny uncle passed a candy store.

“I’ll just stop in and buy Nannie an ice cream cone,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Winter is nearly over and ice cream cones are in season again. I’ll take two or three, for Billie might like one.”

The bunny uncle bought a bag full of the ice cream cones, and he was walking on again, hoping that Nannie would not be ill long, when, all at once, there was a crash in the bushes beside the rabbit gentleman as if some one had fallen down.

“My goodness me sakes alive and some apple dumplings!” cried Uncle Wiggily, jumping to one side. “Who it is?” He hoped it would not prove to be the bad old fox. “Who is it?” he asked, for it was too dark to see.

“It is I—the moon-man,” was the answer. “I hope I did not scare you?”

“Well, you did, a little,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But what are you doing down on the earth? You ought to be up in the sky.”

“I know I ought,” said the other, “but you know how Mother Goose has it:

“That’s how it was,” said the moon-man. “I had to come tumbling down, you see, for that’s the way it is in the book. But, oh, dear! I am so sorry I burned my mouth! How it hurts!”

“Did you really burn your mouth, in the South, eating cold bean porridge?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“I did,” said the moon-man. “Only it was hot when I ate it. It’s cold enough now, though. Oh, how I burn! I wish you could help me.”

“I can!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “See, I have here some cold ice cream cones. Eat one of them, and your mouth will stop burning.”

“Oh, thank you!” cried the moon-man, and, surely enough, when he had eaten the ice cream cone, his mouth was as cool as a refrigerator, and he had no more pain.

“You are very kind,” said the moon-man to Uncle Wiggily. “If ever I can do you a favor I will. But now I must jump back to my place in the moon.”

The rabbit gentleman did not see how the moon-man was going to do any one any favors, if he had to jump away up in the moon, high above the earth. But still Uncle Wiggily was too polite to say so.

“Here I go! Good-by!” cried the man, and, giving a big hop, up to the moon he jumped. If you look closely you can see his face there on moonlight nights. He is smiling.

“Good-by!” called Uncle Wiggily, and on he went to the Wagtail goats’ house to see Nannie. She was very glad to have her bunny uncle call, and more pleased still when he gave her an ice cream cone, and also one to her brother Billie.

Uncle Wiggily stayed for quite some time, talking to the goats, and Uncle Butter told a funny story about a circus picture of a dog, which was so natural that a cat ran away when she saw it.

“Well, I’ll be getting back to my bungalow,” said Uncle Wiggily, after a bit. “Nurse Jane will be worrying about me if I stay too late.”

“Oh, how dark it is!” said Billie, looking out the door. “Aren’t you afraid, Uncle Wiggily?”

“Oh, no,” answered the rabbit uncle. But, when the door of the goats’ house was shut, and the pleasant lamplight no longer streamed out, it was very black and dark indeed. “I wish it were time for the lightning bugs,” thought Mr. Longears. “With them brightly flashing I could easily see my way.”

Uncle Wiggily went on as best he could, but pretty soon he bumped into a tree, and hurt his pink, twinkling nose. Next he stumbled against a big rock, and hurt his paw.

“Oh, dear!” he cried. “This is no fun! I wish it were light so I could see where I am going.”

Then he tripped over a log and came down ker-plunk! hurting his rheumatism, and he felt very badly, indeed.

“Oh, I wish some one would help me find my way to my bungalow!” he cried.

“I’ll help you,” said a kind voice, and then the woods were suddenly made almost as bright as day, for the moon rose over the trees, and shone down, so Uncle Wiggily could see the path, and stumbled no more.

“How is that?” asked the moon-man, beaming down on Uncle Wiggily. “Do I make it light enough for you?”

“Yes, indeed! Fine,” said the bunny uncle. “I can see all right now. Thank you.”

So the moon-man, whose mouth no longer burned, thanks to the ice cream cone, shone brightly until Uncle Wiggily safely reached his bungalow.

And, if the trolley car doesn’t go roller-skating with the apple pie and upset the goldfish, so they spill into the canary’s cage, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Humpty Dumpty.

“Uncle Wiggily, would you mind bringing me some glue when you come home from your walk this afternoon?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as she saw the rabbit gentleman leaving his hollow-stump bungalow one day.

“Glue?” asked Uncle Wiggily, curious like. “I hope you are not going to put it in my chair, so when I sit down I will stick fast, and not be able to get up again.”

“Oh, no!” laughed Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy, “though if you keep on going out so often, the way you do, I’ll need a bit of sticky fly paper, or something like that, to keep you at home.”

“Oh! I have to go off to have adventures now and then,” said the bunny uncle, smiling so that his nose twinkled like a moonbeam shining in the water. “But I’ll bring you the glue all right, Nurse Jane. What is it you want to stick together?”

“A broken teacup,” answered the muskrat lady. “I knocked a breakfast teacup off the table, and it broke. But I can stick the pieces together with glue, and it will be almost as good as new.”

“Good!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “That’s the way to do it!” Then he set off over the fields and through the woods to get the glue.

He found some in the doll doctor’s toy shop, where the monkey-doodle toy-mender used it to fasten together all the playthings the animal boys and girls broke.

“That’s just the glue for Nurse Jane’s cup,” said the doll doctor. “It will mend anything.”

“That’s what we want,” said Uncle Wiggily.

Well, the old gentleman rabbit was going along, hoping he would meet with an adventure before he reached his hollow-stump bungalow, when, all at once, he heard a sort of crowing noise and a clucking, and then a sad voice said:

“Oh, dear, I might have known it would happen! I should never have let you sit on top of the wall, Humpty. Now look what you’ve done! Oh, what will my mother say?”

“Ha! That sounds like Charlie Chick, the little rooster chap,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I wonder what has happened to him, and who Humpty can be? I guess I’ll look and see.”

The bunny uncle went on a little farther and, coming to a stone wall, he saw, on one side of it, Charlie Chick; and the little rooster chap’s tail feathers were all squeezed sideways and crooked, as though he were in great trouble, indeed.

“Why, Charlie!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “What’s the matter? Is Arabella, your sister, lost?”

“Oh, no, Uncle Wiggily!” answered Charlie. “But I had Humpty Dumpty with me, and he sat up on the wall, just as he did when he was out with Mother Goose. But he fell off and now he’s broken, and oh, dear! I fear he never will be himself again.”

“My! My! What’s all this?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “I never heard of Humpty Dumpty, or his fall from the wall. And why can’t he be himself again? If it’s anything that is broken I can mend it, for I have some glue to mend Nurse Jane’s broken cup, and I can mend Humpty Dumpty.”

“Oh, it’s very kind of you, I’m sure,” said Charlie, politely, “but it can’t be done. You see Humpty Dumpty is an egg. My mother, Mrs. Cluck-Cluck, sent me to take him to Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady. But on the way I stopped here to rest and I let Humpty sit upon the wall.”

“Well, what happened then?” asked Uncle Wiggily, as Charlie stopped, to give a little crow, and flap his wings.

“It happened just as it tells about in the Mother Goose book,” went on Charlie. “This is the way it was:

“Why can’t they put him together again?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Where is Humpty? Let me have a look at him. If his shell is only cracked I can mend it with glue. Where is he?”

“On the other side of the stone wall,” answered Charlie. “He fell over or rolled backward, and he must be all broken up by now.”

“Let us hope for the best,” said the rabbit gentleman. “He may be only cracked, Humpty Dumpty may be, and if the glue I have for Nurse Jane will mend a cracked cup, it will mend a cracked egg. I must have a look.”

Up on top of the wall jumped the rabbit gentleman. Then he hopped down on the other side. He looked around for Humpty Dumpty.

Uncle Wiggily saw some broken egg shells. Then he looked some more and rubbed his eyes.

“This is queer,” he said. “If the egg broke, the white and yellow inside ought to have run out on the ground. But I don’t see any. That must have been a hollow egg.”

Just then the rabbit gentleman heard:

“Peep! Peep! Peepity-peep-cheep-cheep!”

“My goodness me sakes alive and some corn-meal pudding!” cried the bunny uncle. “Who is that?”

“It is I, Humpty Dumpty,” was the answer, and out from under a bush ran a cute, little, fluffy, downy chicken.

“Are you Humpty Dumpty?” cried Uncle Wiggily.

“Of course,” peeped the little chicken. “I was inside the eggshell all the while, just waiting to come out. And when Charlie set me on the wall I rolled off, cracked my shell and here I am. I popped out!

“Of course, it isn’t just like in the book,” said the baby chick, “but it’s better. For though I sat on the wall and had a great fall, I don’t need all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to put Humpty together again.”

“No, and you don’t need any of my glue,” said Uncle Wiggily, with a laugh. “There is no use mending a broken eggshell out of which has come a chicken. Oh, I say, Charlie!” cried the bunny uncle. “Fly over the wall. It’s all right. Humpty is here, only he is different from what you thought you would find him. Here he is; a new, little chicken brother for you.”

And wasn’t Charlie surprised? Well, I guess yes! But he loved Humpty Dumpty very much and Humpty loved him. So this time, once more, everything came out all right, just as Mother Goose would have it.

And if the collar button doesn’t go to a necktie party all by itself and leave the comb to play tag with the brush, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Old King Cole.

“Well, Uncle Wiggily Longears, you are getting very stylish, indeed, it seems,” spoke Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, after the postman bird had paid a visit to the hollow-stump bungalow one day, and had left a letter. “Very stylish. Look here!”

“Why, what’s the matter?” asked the bunny uncle. “Do you call it stylish just to get a letter? You often get them, and so do I. This is, very likely, from Grandpa Goosey Gander, asking me to come over and play checkers with him.”

“Indeed, it is nothing of the sort!” exclaimed the muskrat lady. “That is, if you will excuse me for saying so. This is a very stylish letter, indeed. It comes from the king’s palace, as you can see, by the royal stamp on it in gold and red and blue and green. I wonder what it can be?”

“I’ll open it and find out; then I’ll tell you,” said Uncle Wiggily, politely. “I guess it’s from the gold and silver palace of the king, who was in the kitchen counting out his money, while the queen was in the parlor eating bread and honey. The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes, when along came a blackbird and nipped off her nose.

“I helped the king and queen and the maid, you know, and perhaps they are in more trouble, and need more help.”

But when the bunny uncle opened the letter he found it was not from that king, but another—this letter was from Old King Cole.

“Read me the letter,” said Nurse Jane.

So Uncle Wiggily read:

At the bottom of the letter was Old King Cole’s name, in big letters.

“Well, well!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “I don’t understand. What’s it all about, I wonder?”

“Don’t you see!” cried Nurse Jane. “This is a royal invitation from Old King Cole for you to come to his palace, and listen to his fiddlers three making music on their fine fiddles. You must get ready to go. Put on your best suit and look nice.”

“Must I really go?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “I had much rather stay here with you. I don’t know Old King Cole at all well. Must I go?”

“Of course you must go!” Nurse Jane said. “Whenever a king invites you, why, you have to go, even if you must stand on your head. I’ll help you get ready.”

“Very well,” Uncle Wiggily said. “But I had much rather stay home with my slippers on, eating carrot sandwiches. I know it will be too fine and grand for me up at the king’s palace. I’ll be sure to get my napkin on backward, or tickle some one with the wrong fork. But if I must go, I must. I wonder how he came to invite me?”

“Oh, I guess he heard how kind you were to the king who was in the kitchen, counting out his money, and how you dug it up for him when it rolled under the floor,” said Nurse Jane.

So she helped Uncle Wiggily get ready, shaving the back of his neck for him, where he couldn’t himself reach with his razor. And she tied his tie for him, and saw that he was all scrumptious like, and proper.

Finally the rabbit gentleman set off for the palace of the king. He was about halfway there when he heard some little squeaking voices down beside the woodland path, and there he saw Jollie and Jillie Longtail, the mouse children, and their cousin, Squeaky-Eeky.

“Where are you going, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Jollie, the boy mouse.

“To Old King Cole’s to hear some fiddle music,” answered Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, do please take us with you!” begged Jillie. “We just love fiddle music and we can’t ever go to hear any.”

“Why?” asked the bunny uncle.

“Because,” explained Squeaky-Eeky, the little cousin mouse. “You know what it says in Mother Goose.

“‘Hi-Diddle-Diddle. The cat’s in the fiddle.’ Now we couldn’t go to hear music when a cat was in the fiddle, could we?”

“Of course not,” answered Uncle Wiggily. “I never thought of that. Cats and mice don’t go well together. But how can I take you to King Cole? He may not like mice.”

“Put us in your pockets,” said Jillie. “We are not very big, and we can easily hide when you go in the palace. No one will see us in your pockets.”

Well, Uncle Wiggily put them in—Jollie, Jillie and Squeaky-Eeky Longtail. But the rabbit gentleman was afraid lest the king might not like it. However, let us see what happened, as they say in story books.

“Glad to see you, Uncle Wiggily!” cried Old King Cole, as the bunny uncle came in the grand palace. “Make yourself right at home!” and the king clapped his hands. Then some one sang:

In came the fiddlers, playing tweedle-dweele-dee, making nice music, until, all at once:

“Snap! Snap! Snap!” went something. “Snap!”

“My goodness me sakes alive and some orange lemonade!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “What was that?”

“Our fiddle strings have broken!” cried one of the fiddlers. “Now we can make no more music until we have new strings.”

“Oh, dear!” cried King Cole. “That’s too bad. I must have music from my fiddlers three, or from some one, or Mother Goose won’t like it. How can I get squeaky fiddle music for Uncle Wiggily? How can I?”

Just then Jollie Longtail popped his head out from Uncle Wiggily’s pocket.

“If you please, Old King Cole,” he said, “Jillie, Squeaky-Eeky and I, with our squeaky voices, will make music for you if you like.”

“I do like,” said the king. “Make some music, if you please!”

So the mice, who have very squeaky voices, sang nice music, almost like the fiddles, and Old King Cole was a more merry soul than ever.

“I’m glad you came, Uncle Wiggily,” he said. “And I’m glad you brought the nice Longtail mice children with you. Give them all some cheese!” And he laughed most jolly-jilly like.

So the mice sang for the king until the fiddlers’ fiddle strings were fixed, and every one had a good time and plenty to eat.

And if the jam tart doesn’t get inside the huckleberry pie, where the egg beater can’t find it to dance with, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Peter-Peter.

“Uncle Wiggily, don’t you think you’d better take an umbrella with you?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as the rabbit gentleman, Mr. Longears, started out from his hollow-stump bungalow one morning.

“An umbrella, Nurse Jane? Why should I take one with me? I have my red, white and blue-striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch, that you gnawed for me out of a corn-stalk.”

“That wouldn’t be much good in a rain-storm,” said the muskrat lady, with a laugh. “It wouldn’t keep off many of the drops.”

“No, I s’pose not,” said the bunny uncle, sort of rubbing his pink, twinkling nose, thoughtful like, with the brim of his tall silk hat. “So you think it is going to rain, do you?”

“Or snow,” said the muskrat lady, looking to see if the hair ribbon had come off the end of her tail, but it had not, I’m glad to say.

“Well, I guess I’ll be back before it storms,” went on Uncle Wiggily. “I’m only going over to Grandfather Goosey Gander’s pen house to see if he wants to play checkers with grains of corn. I won’t be very long,” and with that Uncle Wiggily hopped away.

Over the fields and through the woods hopped the bunny uncle to the house, or pen, of the old gentleman goose. Uncle Wiggily was thinking what a nice visit he would have when, all of a sudden, he heard from behind a scratchy briar bush a sad voice saying:

“Oh, dear! They’re all spilled! I’ll never be able to pick them up; never! There are too many of them! Oh, dear!”

“Ha! That is funny talk. It sounds as though some one were in trouble,” said Uncle Wiggily to himself. “I wonder if I can help them? I’ll just take a peek first, for it might be the skillery-scalery alligator, with humps on his tail, or the bad fox or wolf, and they would help themselves to catch me rather than have me help them. I’ll take a peek first.”

So Uncle Wiggily peeked out and there, on the other side of the bush he saw a little man, bending down and picking something up off the ground.

Now, as a rule, the bunny uncle didn’t like men, for most of them were hunters, with dogs and bang-bang guns, who came after the animal people. But this man was so little, and so kind-looking and, withal, Uncle Wiggily could see he had no gun, so Mr. Longears knew it would be all right.

“Excuse me,” said Uncle Wiggily, speaking a language that animals and little men can understand. “But can I help you?”

“Oh, hello, Uncle Wiggily,” exclaimed the small chap. “Why, maybe you can help me. You see, I am Peter-Peter, and——”

“What, not Peter-Peter, the Pumpkin-Eater?” asked the rabbit gentleman, surprised like.

“The very same,” was the answer. “I’m that Peter-Peter.”

“Then you must be a friend of Mother Goose,” said the bunny uncle, smiling down one side of his pink twinkling nose.

“I am,” answered Peter-Peter.

“Then I am more than ever anxious to help you,” spoke Mr. Longears. “I always help the friends of Mother Goose. What is the trouble?”

“I have spilled all my pumpkin seeds,” was the answer of Peter-Peter. “You see I was scooping out my pumpkin shell, making it hollow to keep my wife in, as it says in the Mother Goose book. When I had the seeds all scooped out my wife said it would be a good thing to take them over to Mrs. Bushytail, the squirrel lady, as she and her two boys, Johnnie and Billie, could eat them.”

“I guess they would be glad to get them,” said Uncle Wiggily. “In fact, I like roasted pumpkin seeds myself.”

“But the trouble is,” said Peter-Peter, “that when I had put the seeds in a bag, and was on my way to the Bushytail home with them, I came through these woods. The prickly briar bush caught my bag, tore holes in it, and out fell the pumpkin seeds. They are scattered all over the ground here, and, oh, dear! I’ll never be able to pick them up.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” said Uncle Wiggily, with a jolly laugh. “I’ll help you, and I’ll get my friends, Dickie and Nellie Chip-Chip, the sparrows, to help. They are great at picking up seeds.”

So Uncle Wiggily whistled for Dickie and Nellie Chip-Chip, and when the sparrow boy and girl came, with their sharp bills, they soon picked up most of the pumpkin seeds; Uncle Wiggily and Peter-Peter helping, of course.

And when they were all picked up Uncle Wiggily pasted some postage stamps over the holes in Peter-Peter’s bag, so it was as good as ever. Then the little man started off with it over his shoulder to the Bushytail squirrel house.

“Thank you, very much, Uncle Wiggily,” said Peter-Peter. “And you, too, Dickie and Nellie. If ever I can do you a favor I will.”

So he went on, and, when Dickie and Nellie had flown home, Uncle Wiggily hopped along to Grandpa Goosey Gander’s house. There the old rabbit gentleman had a nice time playing checkers with grains of corn, but on his way home, when he was in the middle of the woods, all of a sudden it began to rain very hard.

“Oh, dear!” cried the bunny uncle. “Nurse Jane was right. It is raining, and I have no umbrella! I will get all wet, and my rheumatism will be worse than ever. Oh, dear! I wish I had some place to go in!”

And just then Uncle Wiggily heard a voice singing.

Uncle Wiggily looked through the bushes, and there he saw a cute little house, made from a pumpkin, with a hollowed-out corn-cob for a chimney. And in the door of the house stood the little man, Peter-Peter himself.

“Hello, Uncle Wiggily!” called Peter-Peter. “Come in out of the rain.”

“Is there room in there with you and your wife?” asked the bunny uncle.

“Plenty of room,” answered Peter-Peter. “This is an extra big Thanksgiving pumpkin. Come in!”

In went Uncle Wiggily out of the rain, and he stayed in Peter-Peter’s pumpkin-shell house until the storm was over, and he could go home without getting wet. So you see it was a good thing Uncle Wiggily helped Peter-Peter pick up the pumpkin seeds.

And if the rain-drop doesn’t fall down-stairs and splash all over the pancake turner when it goes out to shovel the snow, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the butcher.

It was raining in animal land, where Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice rabbit gentleman, lived. It had been raining for several days; in fact, ever since the bunny uncle had helped Peter-Peter pick up the pumpkin seeds.

Uncle Wiggily had been caught out in the rain then, and had gone in the pumpkin shell, where Peter-Peter kept his wife very well. That rain was only a shower, which was soon over, but the storm began again and had lasted ever since. It was very wet in animal land.

“My!” exclaimed Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper. “If it doesn’t stop soon I’ll never get the clothes dry.”

“Worse than that,” said Uncle Wiggily. “If it doesn’t stop soon there will be a flood, and our hollow-stump bungalow will be full of water. In fact, I think there is a little water in it now.”

Well, it kept on raining, and there was a flood, so much so that Uncle Wiggily’s cellar was full of water, almost up to the floor, and all about, outside the hollow-stump bungalow, there were little lakes and puddles and rivers of rain water in the woods.

“Will it ever stop raining?” asked Nurse Jane, as she stood at the window, looking out. “If it doesn’t, I don’t know what we shall do. I need some things from the store.”

“I’ll get them for you,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly.

“But how can you, in all this rain?”

“Oh, very easily,” answered the bunny uncle, twinkling his pink nose to make himself bright and cheerful like. “I’ll put on my rubber boots, my raincoat, take an umbrella and go to the store.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s very brave of you to go out in this storm,” said Nurse Jane, “and I hope your rheumatism doesn’t catch cold. But we need some bread, sugar, salt and other things.”

“I’ll get them,” said Uncle Wiggily, and off he started through the storm, well wrapped up so he would get no wetter than could be helped.

The rabbit uncle finally got to the store, and the monkey-doodle gentleman who kept it put in a basket the things Nurse Jane wanted.

He wrapped them in heavy paper, putting some over the top of the basket so in case Uncle Wiggily’s umbrella blew wrong side out the groceries would not get wet.

“Well, I guess everything is going to be all right,” thought Uncle Wiggily to himself, as he hopped along through the rain on his way back to the hollow-stump bungalow. “I don’t believe I’m even going to have an adventure (except now and then splashing into a puddle) for all my coming out in the storm. And I haven’t had an adventure in some time. I really wish something would happen!”

Uncle Wiggily had no sooner thought this than, all of a sudden, something did happen. He slipped into a big puddle with his rubber boots. The water came nearly to the top of them, but that did not so much matter as did something else. For when the bunny uncle tried to pull his feet up out of the puddle he couldn’t do it. No, sir, he could no more pull his feet up than you could get loose from sticky fly paper in case you happened to sit down in it, which, I hope, you never do; though our cat did once. And such a time!

“My! This is quite too bad!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I wonder what could have happened? My feet are caught fast!” He squirmed about a bit with his feet in the rubber boots. Then he said:

“I know what has happened. My feet are held tight in the crooked, twisted old root of a tree that is down under the puddle. I’m caught as badly as if I were in a trap. Oh, dear! This is an adventure, all right, but not the kind I like. I wonder how I can get loose?”

And well might the bunny uncle wonder. His feet were caught fast in the root, away down under water and he could not reach down with his paws to loosen them, for he had his umbrella in one paw and the basket of groceries on the other, for there was water all around him.

“Oh, dear!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I s’pose I could pull my feet out of the rubber boots and just leave them caught in the puddle, but if I did that I’d have to go home bare-pawed, and I’d catch my rheumatism worse than ever. Oh, dear! What shall I do?”

Just then, through the woods Uncle Wiggily heard the sound of a drum. “Dub-dub! Dubbity-dubbity-dub!”

“Ha! I wonder if that can be Sammie Littletail, the bunny boy, coming along with his Christmas drum? If it is he can help me,” said Mr. Longears.

Uncle Wiggily, still caught fast, looked through the trees, and he saw some one sailing along in a washtub. And it was the butcher man, in his white apron and cap, with a big knife in his hand, who was drumming, with the knife handle, on the sides of the tub. And the butcher sang this song:

“Why, that’s in Mother Goose!” cried Uncle Wiggily, joyful like. “This butcher must be a friend of hers. I wonder if he could help me.”

Just then the butcher saw Uncle Wiggily caught fast in the puddle, and, stopping his washtub ship, he asked:

“Are you in trouble?”

“Trouble? I should say I was!” cried the bunny uncle. “My feet are caught fast in a tree root down under the water, and I can’t get loose. Can you help me?”

“I can and will,” replied the butcher. Then, with his long, sharp knife, he reached down under the puddle and cut the tree root that was holding Uncle Wiggily’s feet fast, taking care not to cut the bunny uncle’s rubber boots.

“There you are!” cried the butcher. “Now you’re loose.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” said Uncle Wiggily, hopping out of the puddle. “But, excuse me, I thought there were three of you rub-a-dub-dub men in a tub. You are only one.”

“Well, there were three of us,” said the butcher. “But since Mother Goose wrote that verse about us, after we jumped out of the baked potato, we grew so large that three of us had hard work to fit in one tub. So now we each have a tub to ourselves. Now I must sail on. The baker and candlestick maker and I are having a tub-boat-race. I hope I win. Good-by!”

And on he sailed in his tub, while Uncle Wiggily, his feet no longer caught fast, went safely on to his hollow-stump bungalow through the rain with the groceries.

So the bunny uncle was saved by the butcher, you see, and, if the gas lamp doesn’t go down cellar in the dark and stumble over the fire shovel when it’s playing in the ashes, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the baker.

It was still raining in Woodland, where the animal folk lived. All around the hollow-stump bungalow, where Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, kept house for Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, there were puddles of water; little lakes and rivers, too.

“I think it is getting colder,” said Uncle Wiggily, as he came in from having been up to the Orange Mountain, to get a dozen of lemons so Nurse Jane could bake a cherry pie.

“If it gets colder, perhaps it will stop raining,” Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy remarked, “and goodness knows we have had enough of water.”

“Yes, a little snow for a change would seem nice,” spoke the bunny uncle, looking out of the window at the rain-drops still splashing down.

“Was it raining on the Orange Mountain?” Nurse Jane wanted to know.

“Yes, just as hard as it is down here in the valley. But the water runs off the sides of the mountain, so there are not so many puddles to step in, as I stepped in one the other day, and got my foot caught in a tree root, when the butcher, in his rub-a-dub-dub tub, cut me loose.”

“That was quite an adventure,” said Nurse Jane. “You haven’t seen the other friends of Mother Goose—the baker and the candlestick maker—have you?”

“No,” Uncle Wiggily answered. “But I understand that the butcher’s two friends, the baker and the candlestick maker, are having a race with him, each one in a tub. They may sail along any day now. I guess I’ll go out and look for them.”

“What! In all this rain?” cried Nurse Jane, in surprise. “You’ll catch cold in your rheumatism, I’m sure.”

“Oh, no, I’ll wrap up well in my rubber coat, and put on my rubber boots as I did before,” said the bunny uncle, making his nose twinkle like a gold tooth in the wax doll.

Off started the old rabbit gentleman, carrying a big umbrella so that too many rain-drops would not get on his tall silk hat. He walked along through the woods, down from the trees of which the rain-drops dripped. There were many puddles, but Uncle Wiggily kept as much out of them as he could.

“It is getting quite some colder,” he said to himself, as he put one paw in his pocket to warm it—warm his paw, I mean, not his pocket, for that was warm already. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see it snow.”

And, in a little while, a few flakes of snow did begin to fall, dodging their way in between the rain-drops, and sort of playing tag with one another.

“How pretty the flakes look,” said Uncle Wiggily, coming to a stop to watch them. “I think I’ll sit down a minute and look at them.” He found a fallen log, which, being under a Christmas tree, was not as wet as it might otherwise have been, and down Uncle Wiggily sat on that.

More snowflakes fell, and they looked so pretty that Uncle Wiggily stayed longer than he meant to, sitting on the log. It kept on getting colder and colder, and finally the bunny uncle said:

“Well, I mustn’t sit here any longer. I’ll get up and go back to my nice, warm, cozy hollow-stump bungalow. Yes, I’ll get up and——”

But Uncle Wiggily did not get up. He couldn’t! He had frozen fast to the log, which had some water on it. The cold air had made the water freeze, and Uncle Wiggily was held as fast there as if he had sat down in sticky fly paper—even more tightly, I believe.

“Oh, dear!” he cried. “This is quite too bad! In fact, it is terrible. What shall I do!”

He tried to get up, but he could not, and he did not want to take off his rubber coat, and so free himself, for fear he might catch cold without his coat.

“Oh, dear! I don’t know what to do!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Help! Help! Will no one help me to get loose?”

Then, through the woods he suddenly heard a rub-a-dub-dub drumming sound.

“Ha! I wonder if that can be my friend, the butcher?” thought the bunny uncle. But when he looked he saw a baker coming along, dressed in a spotless white apron and cap. The baker had a loaf of bread in his hand, and with a large spoon he was pushing himself along in his tub through the puddles of water, which had not yet solidly frozen over, though there were chunks of ice in them. And the baker was singing:

Then the baker, seeing Uncle Wiggily sitting on the log, called to the bunny uncle as he stopped his tub boat:

“Would you like to buy a loaf of bread?” asked the baker.

“Well, yes, I might, for I heard Nurse Jane say we needed some,” answered the bunny uncle.

“Then please come and get it,” said the baker. “For I am riding a boat-tub race with the butcher and the candlestick maker, and I don’t want to stop. They might get in ahead of me. You see, we are doing a little different from what it says in the Mother Goose book,” went on the baker, shaking some rain-drops off his white cap. “We each have a tub to ourselves.”

“I see,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I heard about it. In fact, I met the butcher sailing along in his tub the other day.”

“Oh, did you? Then I must hurry,” cried the baker, “or he will win the race. Come and get your loaf of bread and I’ll paddle along.”

“I can’t come and get it,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I am sorry, but I really can’t.”

“Why not?” asked the baker.

“Because I am frozen fast to this log,” said the bunny uncle, “and I really can’t get up, much as I would like to. I was calling for help, and, when you came along, I hoped——”

“Ha! Say no more!” cried the baker, in a jolly voice. “Of course I’ll help you. Never mind about the race. I’ll get you loose!”

“How?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

“I’ll show you!” cried the baker. He stopped his tub, which had started off by itself, put on his rubbers, and stepped out into a little puddle. In his hands he carried the hot loaf of bread, and the hot baked potato. Putting these down on the log, one on each side of Uncle Wiggily, the heat of them soon melted the ice, and the rabbit gentleman was unfrozen, and could get up and go on his way as well as ever.

“Oh, thank you!” he called to the baker. “Thank you!”

“You are welcome,” was the answer, “and take the hot bread and potato with you,” and with that the baker jumped back in his tub and went on sailing, hoping to catch up to the butcher.

So Uncle Wiggily went to his hollow-stump bungalow, not being frozen any more, and all was well. And if the soft boiled egg doesn’t go sliding on the ice and fall down so it breaks all to pieces and has to be put in a pudding, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the candlestick maker.

After supper, one night, Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, put on his tall silk hat, his fur-lined overcoat, and, taking his red, white and blue-striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch down off the piano, he started for the door.

“What! You are not going out to-night, are you?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, in surprise.

“Why, yes, for a little while,” answered the bunny uncle. “It has stopped raining, you know, and the ground has dried up. It is cold, but I have my fur coat, so I shall be nice and warm.”

“Where are you going?” asked Nurse Jane.

“To call on Mr. Longtail, the mouse gentleman. He likes night visits better than day ones, so that’s why I go in the evening. He’s like an owl that way.”

“Well, don’t stay too late,” said Nurse Jane, and Uncle Wiggily promised that he would not. Out into the night he went, but it was not very dark, for there was a moon shining. And as the rabbit uncle was hopping along through the woods he suddenly stepped upon something round, which rolled from under his paw and almost threw him down.

“Ha! I wonder what that can be?” Uncle Wiggily said. He looked and saw a brass candlestick on the ground. “This is queer,” went on the bunny uncle. “I did not know that candlesticks grew in the woods. Some one must have dropped it. I’ll take it with me, and perhaps Mr. Longtail will know whose it is.”

With the candlestick in one paw and his rheumatism crutch in the other, Uncle Wiggily once more hopped on. Pretty soon he saw a little light flickering through the trees.

“Why, that looks just like a lightning bug,” said the bunny uncle, “only they are not out this time of the year. I wonder what that can be?”

Then he heard a tummity-tum-tum, drumming sound, and a voice sang:

“Why, that must be the last of the three, queer Mother Goose men, who went sailing a race in washtubs, when the weather was rainy,” said Uncle Wiggily. “And this one must be the candlestick maker, for I have met the other two.

“But if this is the candlestick maker I don’t see how he can be sailing in his tub when the rain has stopped, and there are no little rivers, lakes or even puddles in the woods,” went on the rabbit gentleman. “Everything is frozen over. I don’t see how he can.”

Then the singing voice stopped, and Uncle Wiggily heard some one crying:

“Oh, dear! Ouch, how it burns! Oh, where can it be? Where can it be?”

The flickering light came nearer, and Uncle Wiggily, looking through the trees, saw that it was not a lightning bug, or firefly, but a little man, with a leather apron on, and a hammer and other tools hanging from his belt. The tools jingled and rattled. Behind the man, who was pulling it along as if it were a sled, with a rope through one the handles, was the washtub. In one hand the man carried a lighted candle, and, all the while, he kept on saying:

“Oh, dear! Ouch! How it burns me! Oh, my!”

“Excuse me,” said Uncle Wiggily, politely, “but you seem to be in trouble. Perhaps I can help you. What burns you?”

“This candle,” answered the man. “I ought to have a candlestick to hold it, but I dropped my nice brass candlestick as I ran through the woods, and now I have to hold the candle in my bare fingers. And it is so short that it burns me. Ouch!”

“Ha! Then this is what you want,” Uncle Wiggily said, and he handed over the candlestick he had picked up.

“The very thing!” cried the little man, in delight. “Thank you so much. Now my fingers won’t burn any more.”

He stuck the end of the lighted candle in the stick and spoke again.

“I’m the candlestick maker, as you can see; I make candlesticks, but just now I am not making any, as I am on a race with the butcher and baker to see who first will get to Mother Goose’s house. We started out in a dreadful rain-storm, when we could float in our tubs like boats, but the butcher and baker seem to have gotten ahead of me.”

“They have,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I met them two days ago.”

“Then there isn’t much use in my keeping on,” said the candlestick maker. “But it has gotten colder. It may snow, and if I come to a hill I can coast down it in my tub, which I made into a sled when I found the ground frozen and all the water gone. If I can slide down hill in my tub-sled I may yet get ahead of the butcher and baker and win the prize of a hot baked potato.”

“Perhaps you may,” said Uncle Wiggily, as he told how the baker had kindly thawed him off the frozen log with the hot baked potato and a hot loaf of bread.

“Well, I’ll be getting on,” said the candlestick maker, after a bit. “Thank you for being kind to me. If ever I can do you a favor I will. My fingers no longer burn.” Then he hurried off through the woods, dragging his tub-sled after him.

Uncle Wiggily had a nice visit with Mr. Longtail, the mouse gentleman, but when the bunny uncle started home the moon had gone down and it was very dark. Soon Uncle Wiggily was lost in the woods. He could not tell which way to go, and he hopped around, stubbing his paws and bunking into trees, until he was all sore and lame.

“Oh, I wish I had a light!” he cried. And, no sooner had he spoken than he heard a drumming sound, and along came the candlestick maker with the lighted candle.

“Here you are! Here’s your light, Uncle Wiggily!” the candlestick maker cried. “I’ll light you all the way to your hollow-stump bungalow.”

“Good!” cried the bunny uncle. “But I don’t want to take your time and delay you. I thought you were racing.”

“I gave it up. The baker won and got there first. I just met Old Mother Hubbard and she told me. So I’m going to take you home.” And he did, making the woods light with his candle, all the way to the bunny uncle’s hollow-stump bungalow.

So the rabbit gentleman was all right again, you see, and if the piece of cheese doesn’t run away from the slice of apple pie, and get lost in the rice pudding, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Tom-Tom.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice rabbit gentleman, was going along through the woods one day, wondering what sort of an adventure he would have, when he met Mother Goose, who, as I have told you before, had come, with her large family of funny folk, to live in the forest near the hollow-stump bungalow of the bunny uncle.

“How do you do, Mother Goose?” asked Mr. Longears, as he made a polite bow, taking off his tall silk hat.

“I am very well, thank you,” she said. “You look well yourself. I wonder if you have seen him anywhere, as you have been walking along?”

“Seen whom?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “If you mean the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker, I have. I met them the other day——”

“No, thank you, I don’t mean them,” said Mother Goose. “They have come safely home again with their rub-a-dub-dub-tubs, and they are happily living together once more. No, it’s another of my friends who is lost. You may have seen him. He is——”

But just then Old Mother Hubbard came to the door of her house, after having given her dog a bone, and she called across the woodland path:

“Oh, Mother Goose! Little Tommie Tucker is crying for his supper. What shall I give him, white bread and butter?”

“Wait a minute. I’ll be right there,” answered Mother Goose. “I want to put a little molasses on Tommie’s bread. You walk on,” she said to Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll come back to you in a minute and tell you who is lost.”

But Mother Goose must have had to give Tommie Tucker a bigger supper than usual, or else some of her other friends wanted something, for Uncle Wiggily hopped on and on, and the nice old goose lady did not come to speak to him.

“It’s funny,” said the bunny uncle, “but I wonder who it is that is lost? I can’t very well look for him—or her—until I know. It may be Little Bo Peep, or Jack Horner. Well, I’ll keep on, and I may meet with the lost one, whoever he or she is; or I may have an adventure. Who knows?”

Well, the bunny uncle had not gone on much farther before, all at once, he heard some one running through the bushes, and the sound of loud squeals.

“Ha! Something is happening,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Perhaps this is the adventure I am expecting.”

Then, all of a sudden, through the bushes came running a boy with a squealing pig under his arm.

“Squee! Squee! Squee!” cried the pig.

“Hold on! Stop! Wait a minute!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Who are you?”

“I am Tom-Tom, the piper’s son,” was the answer.

“Oh, you’re from Mother Goose, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m running away from her now,” answered Tom-Tom. “You know how it goes in the book:

“That’s how it is in the book,” went on Tom-Tom. “Only it isn’t exactly right. I didn’t do any roaring, though I may when I get the beating. It’s the pig who is doing the roaring.”

“It sounds more like squealing,” said Uncle Wiggily.

“Yes, you could call it that,” said Tom-Tom, as he looked at the pig under his arm, which cried louder than before. I mean the pig squealed, not Tom-Tom’s arm.

“But look here,” said Uncle Wiggily. “You should not have taken this pig. That’s quite wrong you know, Tom-Tom. Besides, Mother Goose is after you. I just met her, and she started to tell me about some of her friends being lost. She asked me to help look for him—or her—but before she could tell me who it was, she was called away. It must have been you she meant.”

“It was,” said Tom-Tom. “I had to run after I took the pig, but the funny part of it is I can’t find any street to run down, as the book says I did. It’s all woods around here; no streets at all. I’d run with the pig down the street, fast enough, if I could find one.”

“No, no! You mustn’t do that,” said Uncle Wiggily. “You only go down the street after the pig was eat, or eaten, to be more correct. Besides, you ought not to take the pig at all.”

“What shall I do?” asked Tom-Tom. “I have the pig now, you see. What must I do with it?”

“I’ll take him with me,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I can lead him back home, and then you must go tell Mother Goose you’re sorry, and I don’t believe she’ll whip you or beat you.”

“All right,” said Tom-Tom, the piper’s son. “I’ll do as you say.”

He gave Uncle Wiggily the pig, which was a baby one, and the bunny gentleman led it along by a string, while Tom-Tom hurried off to tell Mother Goose he was sorry that he had been a little bad. And Mother Goose forgave him, and did not whip him, so Tom-Tom did not have to go roaring down the street after all.

“Well, what have you there, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Nurse Jane, when she saw the bunny gentleman coming along leading a pig.

“This is the pig Tom-Tom had,” said Mr. Longears, and then, all at once, before he could say anything more, the pig began to squeal with all his might and so loudly that Nurse Jane could not hear the bunny uncle’s voice.

“Mercy,” cried the muskrat lady. “What a noise!” and she put her paws over her ears. “Take him away, Wiggy, do. That’s a dear! Take him away!”

“Squee! Squee! Squee!” yelled the baby pig. And then along came Mother Hubbard’s dog.

“Ha! So here’s where you are, eh?” asked the dog. “Well, you come right back to your pen!”

“I will, and right gladly,” squealed the pig, “and don’t let Tom-Tom take me again. Thank you, Uncle Wiggily, for bringing me this far.”

Then the dog led the pig home by the ear, piggie squealing all the way, but he stopped when Mother Goose gave him something to eat. And Tom-Tom never took the pig again, so the little boy did not have to run roaring down the street, I’m glad to say.

And, if the sugar spoon doesn’t whisper to the butter knife and have to stay on the table after the rest of the dishes go to the sink to be washed, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the crooked man.

“Heigh-ho! Away I go!” sang Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, one day, as he looked in the glass to see if his whiskers were on straight, and his nose twinkling just right.

“What? Away again?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper of the hollow-stump bungalow, as she finished drying the dinner dishes. “You seem to me to go out a great deal, Mr. Longears.

“Far be it from me,” she went on, “to say anything about it, but I should think you would get tired of going around so much.”

“Oh, no,” Uncle Wiggily laughed. “I like it. I have a new adventure nearly every day, and I think it is good for my rheumatism. So, heigh-ho! Away I go!”

Off through the woods went Uncle Wiggily. It would soon be Spring now, and already the pussy willows were just beginning to learn how to mew a little bit, like baby cats.

As the rabbit gentleman went along he saw, lying on the path in front of him, a piece of money. But it was a very queer bit of money, indeed. It was all bent and twisted and crooked, as though a trolley car had stepped on it by mistake, and on one side was a figure six.

“Well, maybe this will bring me good luck,” said Uncle Wiggily. “It doesn’t seem to be good for much else—such crooked money. A six-cent piece, I guess it was once. I’ll just put it in my pocket.”

So he did, and he walked along a little farther, until, coming to a place where a great, big tree had fallen to the ground, Uncle Wiggily heard some one sitting on it saying:

“Oh, dear! I’ve lost it! I can’t find it anywhere, and without it I don’t see how I can do what it says in the Mother Goose book I must do. It’s lost—gone!”

Uncle Wiggily looked and saw, sitting on the fallen tree, a very funny, but nice, old man. And the man was very crooked. He was bent and twisted until there was not a straight place on him, not even his nose, which was wobbled and bent over to one side, and his ears were folded together like pieces of paper.

“Well, well,” said Uncle Wiggily, feeling sorry for so crooked a man, “this is too bad. I wonder what happened to him to make him so bent, and I wonder what he has lost?” for the crooked, twisted man was turning his pockets inside out, and even his pockets were curled around like a corkscrew.

“Oh, such trouble as I am in!” cried the man. “Oh, dear!”

“Ha, trouble! That means here is a chance for me to help,” said the bunny uncle. “Excuse me,” he said, “but who are you, and can I do anything to help you?”

“Ha! Uncle Wiggily Longears! I know you by your pictures!” said the man. “Don’t you know me? I’m in the book that Mother Goose wrote. It says about me that once

“That’s who I am,” said the man. “But now I’ll never be able to buy the crooked cat to catch the crooked mouse, and live with me forever in my little crooked house.”

“Why not?” asked Uncle Wiggily, sort of wondering like.

“Because I lost the crooked sixpence,” said the crooked man. “I found it against the crooked stile all right, after I’d walked the crooked mile. The road did twist and turn like a carpenter’s shaving, so it was crooked all right. And when I came to the stile, which is a pair of steps to get over a fence—a pair on each side—they were so crooked I could hardly get over them. And there was the crooked sixpence. But I must have lost it out of my pocket, for I haven’t it now.”

“Is this it?” asked Uncle Wiggily, as he took the crooked piece of money out of his ear, which he sometimes used as a pocket.

“Oh, that’s just it!” cried the crooked man, in delight. “How ever did you find it?”

“It was lying on the path in the woods,” said the bunny uncle, “and I picked it up. You may have it back.”

“Oh, now I am all right!” laughed the crooked man. “I can buy the crooked cat, and it will catch a crooked mouse, and then we’ll walk along and find our little, crooked house.”

“But please don’t let your crooked cat catch my little mice friends, Jollie or Jillie Longtail, or Squeaky-Eeky, the cousin mouse?” begged Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, indeed not!” promised the crooked man. “My crooked cat will only catch a crooked candy mouse. Perhaps you would like to come with me and see me buy the crooked cat.”

“I would,” spoke Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll come.”

The crooked man started off, twisting this way and that as he walked along the crooked mile, and Uncle Wiggily, who was sort of curious and inquisitive, asked:

“What made you get all twisted up this way?”

“Rheumatism,” was the crooked man’s answer. “But I don’t mind now, for I have no pain. In fact, I think it’s quite jolly to be crooked and live in a crooked house. It’s so different from other people.”

“Yes,” said Uncle Wiggily, “it is certainly different. But it is nice that you are so happy about it. Some folks would be sad. I’m glad you are jolly.”

Pretty soon the two friends came to where crooked cats were sold for crooked money. By this time Uncle Wiggily was so tired, from having to jump back and forth to follow the crooked man walking a crooked mile, that the bunny uncle thought he would go back to his hollow-stump bungalow and rest.

But the crooked man, after he had bought the crooked cat, still went along with Uncle Wiggily, and it was a good thing he did. For, when Uncle Wiggily was about halfway home, out from behind a stump a bad old fox jumped at him. Zip!

“Ah, ha!” cried the fox. “Now I have you!” And then he saw the crooked man and crooked cat, the fox did, and he rubbed his eyes with his paws, once or twice, and cried out:

“Oh! What does this mean? I must be asleep and dreaming, for never can there really be such strange, crooked things in this world as that crooked man and cat. I must be dreaming, and pretty soon I’ll wake up in my den. I’ll just lie quietly and not move, or I might have a worse dream.”

And, thinking it was all a dream, the fox lay down in the woods to sleep, and so he didn’t get Uncle Wiggily after all, thanks to the crooked man and cat. The bunny uncle hurried away from the sleeping fox, and the twisted chap, with the doubled-up pussy, soon reached their own crooked house, where they lived happily for many crooked years, catching crooked candy mousies that cried crooked candy tears.

So no more at present, if you please. But in the next chapter, if the olive oil and the vinegar speak nicely to each other when they meet at the party in the lettuce salad, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the barber.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old rabbit gentleman, walked across the sitting-room of his hollow-stump bungalow, to where a looking-glass hung on the wall. He looked in the glass, and rubbed his paw, thoughtful like, up and down his chin.

“What is the matter?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper. “Did something bite you?”

“No,” answered Uncle Wiggily, “but I think I need to shave off some of my whiskers. They are getting too long. Also I need a hair cut.”

“Gracious goodness me sakes alive, and some corn-meal muffin lollypops!” exclaimed Nurse Jane. “What for? A shave! A hair cut!”

“Well, you see,” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, “Spring is nearly here now, and, though I let my hair and whiskers grow long in the cold weather, to keep me warm, I don’t need them so long now, as it is getting warmer. So I shall go to the barber’s.”

“Why don’t you shave yourself?” asked Nurse Jane.

“I could do that,” the bunny uncle said. “Only I can’t very well cut my own hair. So I might as well have both done by the barber.”

The old gentleman rabbit, taking his red, white and blue-striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch down off the bathtub, started out through the woods and across the fields for the barber’s.

Mr. Longears had not gone very far before he came to the house where Mother Goose lived. She was up bright and early, shaking out her feather beds; and, seeing the old rabbit gentleman, she asked:

“Where are you going?”

“To the monkey-doodle barber’s to get shaved,” replied Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, would you just as soon go to my barber’s?” asked Mother Goose.

“Your barber’s? I didn’t know you had one,” said Uncle Wiggily, sort of laughing. “I didn’t know you ladies had your hair cut.”

“We don’t,” spoke Mother Goose. “But this barber is one of the friends in my story book, you know, and I’d like to give him something to do. You must have heard of him.

“Oh, I’ve often heard of him!” said Uncle Wiggily. “But I haven’t a pinch of snuff to give him, and besides I don’t need a wig.”

“Oh, well, you don’t have to take a wig,” said Mother Goose. “As for the snuff, tell him I’ll send little Tommie Tucker down with it later.”

“Another thing,” spoke Uncle Wiggily. “If that barber of yours is shaving a pig I don’t believe he’ll have time to shave me.”

“Oh, that will be all right,” said Mother Goose, laughing. “He doesn’t really shave a pig. I just put ‘pig’ in to make it rhyme with ‘wig.’ Hop along now, and get shaved. The barber lives down the lane, with the little boy who was given the bag of wool from Baa-Baa, the black sheep.”

“Very good,” answered Uncle Wiggily, politely. So along he hopped, to the barber shop, which he soon reached. Out in front was a red, white and blue-striped pole, like the rabbit gentleman’s rheumatism crutch, and inside the shop was the barber man, a little chap, not much larger than the bunny uncle himself.

“Shave? Hair cut? Shampoo? Massage? Manicure?” asked the barber, clicking his scissors.

“Just a shave and hair cut,” answered Uncle Wiggily, getting in the chair, while the barber tucked an apron under the bunny’s chin.

“Fine weather we’re having,” said the barber, as he began to cut Uncle Wiggily’s hairy fur.

“Very,” said Uncle Wiggily. “To-morrow is the first day of Spring, and that’s why I’m getting a hair cut, to be ready for warmer weather.”

“Good!” said the barber. Then, when he had Uncle Wiggily’s hair half cut, the barber stopped and began to mix up some soap suds lather in a cup.

“What are you doing?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Why don’t you finish cutting my hair before you shave me?”

“Because my scissors are too dull. They would pull. I’ll send them to the scissors-to-grind man to be sharpened, and, while I’m waiting for them to come back I’ll shave you.”

So he began to shave the bunny uncle’s whiskers, talking all the while about the weather and what a hard Winter it had been, and how much carrots cost and all of that.

Then, all of a sudden, when Uncle Wiggily was half shaved, there was a whistling sound out in front of the barber shop, and a voice sang:

Into the shop came little Tommie Tucker. He had a paper package in his hand, and he tossed it across the room to the barber, saying:

“Here’s your pinch of snuff. Mother Goose sent me with it. How is Uncle Wiggily’s shave and hair cut coming off?”

“It is coming off all—aker-choo! Kersnitzio! Aker-ker-foozilum-goozilum—choo-chee!” sneezed the barber, wiping some tears out his eyes.

“Oh, my!” laughed Tommie Tucker. “What kind of a shave and hair cut is a ker-choo! Oh-er—Snitzio! Whoo-ee-whoop-gizzium!” and Tommie himself was sneezing, too.

“What’s all this?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Why don’t you finish my—ker-choo! Goo-zoo! Gizzium! Whush! Oh-ker-skee-zicks!” And he sneezed so hard that he sneezed himself right out of the barber’s chair into the middle of the room. Then they were all sneezing, the barber, Uncle Wiggily and Tommie Tucker. For you see when Tommie tossed the barber the paper of snuff Mother Goose had sent the paper burst open and the snuff scattered all about the place. All over the shop floated the sneezy stuff.

“Ker-choo!” sneezed the barber.

“A-ker-choo-choo!” sneezed Tommie.

“A-ker-choo-choo-choo! Toot-toot! All aboard!” and Uncle Wiggily sneezed like a railroad train going through a tunnel.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Tommie Tucker. “I should not have been so careless.” But soon all the snuff blew out of the window, the sneezes stopped, and the barber finished shaving and hair cutting Uncle Wiggily, and that’s the end of this story.

But if the man beating our carpets doesn’t stop to play marbles with the moth balls, and make the roller-skates feel lonesome for a lollypop, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the blackbirds.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, came out of his hollow-stump bungalow to take a walk in the woods one day.

“I hope I may meet with an adventure,” he said to himself, as he limped along on his red, white and blue crutch, that Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, had gnawed for him out of a corn-stalk.

An adventure, you know, as I have told you before, is something that happens to you. If you find a stick of lollypop candy, that’s a nice adventure. But, if you lose your penny down a crack in the board walk, that’s an unpleasant adventure; though it may turn out all right in the end.

“Yes,” went on Uncle Wiggily, sort of twinkling his pink nose, thoughtful like, “I hope I have a nice adventure, or, perhaps, even a funny one, like sneezing, as, when Tommie Tucker gave the barber the pinch of snuff.”

That’s the story I told you last night, if you will kindly remember.

So Uncle Wiggily hopped along, over the fields and through the woods, and pretty soon he came to where Mother Goose lived, not far from his own hollow-stump bungalow. Mother Goose was looking up at the sky.

“Good morning! What are you looking for?” asked the bunny uncle. “Are you looking for signs of rain, or snow in the clouds?”

“No, indeed,” laughed Mother Goose. “But you know this is the first day of Spring, and the little birds should begin to sing. I am looking to see if the blackbirds are flying up from down South, where they went to spend the Winter. They always come back in the Spring, you know.”

“Yes,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But I do not see any blackbirds coming,” and he, too, looked up at the sky. It was blue—very blue and pretty—like babies’ eyes. And there were little white clouds in the sky, floating along like fairy ships. But there were no blackbirds to be seen.

“I hope nothing has happened to them,” said Mother Goose, sort of anxious like. “They should be here now.”

“I, too, hope they are all right,” Uncle Wiggily said. “I am going for a walk, and if I see the blackbirds, I will tell them to hurry, as you are looking for them.”

“I’ll be very glad if you do that,” spoke Mother Goose, and then she had to go next door to see if Little Bo Peep had found her lost sheep.

Once more Uncle Wiggily hopped along. He looked on all sides of him, and up in the air, hoping he might see the blackbirds, for then, surely, it would be Spring, and Winter had lasted all too long for the animal folk.

But no birds could the bunny uncle see. On and on he went, until, after a while, he came to the palace where lived Old King Cole, the jolly old soul. And, as Mr. Longears was wondering whether or not to go in, and pay King Cole a visit, he heard some one humming a verse that went like this:

Uncle Wiggily stood still. He thought for a moment.

“I wonder,” he said. “I wonder—four-and-twenty—blackbirds? Mother Goose didn’t say how many she was expecting, and these may be the very same ones. I guess I’ll go in and see about this.”

Into the palace of Old King Cole went the bunny uncle. He knew his way about very well, for he had been there before. From the kitchen came all sorts of the most delicious smells, just like a pie baking.

“Why, hello, Uncle Wiggily!” cried jolly Old King Cole, as he saw the bunny uncle hopping along. “Come in and sit down! How are you?”

“Fine!” cried the bunny uncle. “Very fine, indeed. And yourself?” he asked, politely.

“I never felt better in my life. I am just going to have a bit of lunch. Won’t you sit down and help me enjoy it?” asked Old King Cole, also politely. “You may have some carrots with lettuce sauce on, or a bit of boiled lollypops with ice cream cones sprinkled on the top. Anything you wish!”

“That is very good of you,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But don’t go to any trouble on my account. I’ll have whatever you are going to have.”

“Then it will be pie!” cried Old King Cole. “I told the cook to have pie to-day, and I think it is ready. I’ll ring the bell for it.”

“Ding-dong!” rang the bell. In came the cook with a big pie on a dish. And the cook began to hum:

“What’s that?” cried Old King Cole. “Twenty-four blackbirds baked in my pie! Why, how did that happen?”

“It was this way,” said the cook. “You told me to give you pie to-day. Well, I made all ready for it, but, at the last minute, I had nothing to put in the pie—no apples, no cherries, no peaches—nothing at all. I did not know what to do, but, all of a sudden, I looked out of the window, and I saw two dozen blackbirds flying along. ‘The very thing!’ said I to myself. ‘They’ll do for Old King Cole’s pie!’ I asked them if they would mind getting in between the upper and lower pie crusts, and they said no.”

“And did they?” asked the king, putting his crown on sideways.

“They did,” answered the cook. “Look!” and he sang:

Then, taking care not to hurt the feathered singers, the cook cut open the pie. Surely enough, out flew the blackbirds, singing as sweetly as one could wish. Around and around the palace they flew, singing, and Uncle Wiggily cried:

“Why, these must be the blackbirds Mother Goose is looking for! Did you come up from the South to tell us that Spring has come?” he asked them.

“Yes,” answered the birds, “we did. But first we wanted to snuggle up in the pie for the king.”

“Ha! Well, you did it all right!” laughed Old King Cole. “But, now, I don’t need you in my pie any longer, so fly away to Mother Goose. Uncle Wiggily and I will eat cake, instead of pie, to-day, since there is nothing between the crusts to chew on.”

So they ate cake, and the blackbirds, which had only been put in the pie just after it came from the oven, flew all about animal land, singing: “Spring is here! Spring is here!”

So the bunny gentleman had his adventure after all, you see, and if the cake of soap doesn’t slide over the bathroom floor, and bunk into the wash rag, when it is cleaning its teeth, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the fat man.

“A letter for you, Uncle Wiggily,” said Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as she went to the door of the hollow-stump bungalow, when the bird postman gave a whistle, and a tap of his bill, to let them know that he had some mail.

“A letter for me! Thats’s nice!” said the bunny uncle. “Why, it’s an invitation to a party—for you and me,” he went on to Nurse Jane. “It’s from Jollie and Jillie Longtail, the mice children. They want us to come to their house,” and he read the invitation.

“Shall you go?” asked Nurse Jane.

“I shall,” answered Uncle Wiggily. “And before I go I must practice that new ice cream cone dance, where you stand on one ear and eat a lollypop. You’ll go, of course, Nurse Jane.”

“Well, I don’t know. I need a new dress, and——”

“Say no more about it!” cried Uncle Wiggily, with a jolly laugh. “Here is some money. Go down to the five and ten cent store and buy the finest gold and diamond silk dress you can find. I want you to look nice.”

So Nurse Jane bought the new dress, which had rows and rows of double plaited insertion with fried egg tassels down the side, and Uncle Wiggily practiced dancing for the party the Longtail mice children were to have.

At last the evening for the party came. Off started Uncle Wiggily and Nurse Jane, talking of the good times they were going to have, when, all at once, the bunny gentleman cried:

“Oh, dear! I’ve forgotten my dancing shoes! I’ll run back to the bungalow after them. You keep on, Nurse Jane, and I’ll soon catch up to you.”

Uncle Wiggily turned back, taking a shortcut to the hollow-stump bungalow, where he lived, and he was almost there when, all at once, he heard some one crying sadly:

“Oh, dear! It’s gone! Oh, what shall I do? I’d go after him if I could, but I can’t. Oh, what trouble I’m in!”

“Ha! Trouble!” cried the bunny uncle. “Some one is in trouble! That’s what I like to hear! I mean I like to hear it because I like to help people out of trouble. I must see who this is.”

He looked through the bushes and there, sitting on a stump, in the moonlight, Uncle Wiggily saw a very big man, with a turban—a white cloth, like a twisted towel—around his head. The man was sort of chocolate-colored.

“Well, what is your trouble?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Perhaps I can help you. Who are you?”

“Surely you must have heard of me,” said the big man, puffing out his chest. “I am in Mother Goose’s book.”

“I don’t seem to remember you,” said Uncle Wiggily, sort of thoughtful like, scratching his pink, twinkling nose with his ear. “If you would kindly tell me——”

Then the troubled one sang:

“Oh, now I remember you,” said Uncle Wiggily.

“I’m glad you do,” spoke the fat man. “So you see how it is. I’m really quite vexed, which means just a little angry, and I’m in trouble, for the snipe bird did fly away with my pipe, and I can’t smoke, and I must do that, or it won’t be the way it is in the Mother Goose book. Do you think you can help me?”

“Well, I’ll try,” said Uncle Wiggily. “You just wait here until I run to my hollow-stump bungalow for my dancing slippers, and, when I come back I’ll see what I can do.”

Uncle Wiggily hurried on through the woods, found his dancing shoes, and was hurrying back, when, all of a sudden, he slipped and fell head over heels with his slippers, and a big sliver was stuck in his paw.

“Oh, dear!” cried the bunny uncle. “That sliver hurts very much! What shall I do? Now I am in trouble, for I can’t dance and I can’t help the fat man of Bombay. Oh, dear, what can I do?”

Uncle Wiggily couldn’t hop on with that sliver in his paw, and he couldn’t pull it out, try as he did.

“Help! Help!” he called, as loudly as he could. “Will no one help me, and the fat man of Bombay?”

“Ha! Who is that calling?” asked a voice. “And who knows about the fat man of Bombay?”

“I do,” answered the bunny uncle. “I am calling, and I know the Bombay fat man. He is in trouble, too.”

Then through the bushes came flying a bird called a snipe, and in his bill he carried a pipe.

“Oh, you have it!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Why don’t you give it back to him so he won’t be sad and vexed any more? Why don’t you give back the pipe to the fat man of Bombay?”

“I would, if I could find him,” answered the snipe. “You see, I only took his pipe in fun. He looked so funny sitting there smoking, that I thought I’d play a trick on him. So I flew away with his pipe, that’s because I’m a snipe. But I’ll give it back to him now. Is there something the matter with you?”

“Yes,” answered Uncle Wiggily, sadly, “I have run a big wooden splinter in my paw, and I can’t get it out, and I want to go to the Longtail dance and I can’t——”

“Of course you can!” cried the snipe bird, in a jolly voice. “With my sharp bill I can easily pull the splinter out of your paw. Let me get hold of it.”

Laying down the fat man’s pipe, the snipe soon pulled the splinter out of Uncle Wiggily’s paw.

“Now I can go to the dance!” cried the bunny uncle.

“And if you will show me where the fat man of Bombay is, I’ll take him back his pipe,” said the snipe.

“This way!” cried Uncle Wiggily. He showed the bird where the sad, fat man was sitting, and the snipe gave back the pipe.

“Oh, how good you are!” cried the fat man, striking a match, but only in fun, of course. “Now my troubles are over.”

“And so are mine—the sliver-trouble!” said the bunny uncle. Then the fat man of Bombay, which is in India, smoked his pipe, the snipe flew away and Uncle Wiggily and Nurse Jane went on to the dance and had a fine time.

And if the top of the stairs doesn’t go sit at the bottom, so the wax doll can’t get up to sleep in the cat’s cradle, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the tarts.

“Where are you going, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, as she saw the rabbit gentleman starting out of the hollow-stump bungalow one morning.

“Oh, just for a walk, over the fields and through the woods,” he answered. “This is the Spring of the year, now, you know, since the four-and-twenty blackbirds jumped out of Old King Cole’s pie, and I want to see if the grass and flowers have begun to spring up.”

“I think it is a little early for them,” spoke Nurse Jane.

“Well, I’ll go for a walk, anyhow,” said Uncle Wiggily.

So the bunny uncle hopped on and on, sometimes leaning on his red, white and blue-striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch, that Nurse Jane had gnawed for him out of a corn-stalk, and again he would carry it under his paw.

Pretty soon Uncle Wiggily came to the palace where Old King Cole lived. He was thinking of going inside, and perhaps playing a game of checkers, as he used to do with Grandfather Goosey Gander, when, all at once, the bunny uncle saw a lady looking at him from the kitchen window.

The lady had on a silk dress, all spangled over with red hearts, like a valentine. And on her head was a cap, and that had blue hearts on, so she looked very pretty indeed.

“How do you do?” asked the lady of Uncle Wiggily.

“Very well,” he answered. “And how are you?”

“Oh, not well at all,” was the answer, and the lady sighed sadly. “Oh, there is so much trouble here!”

“Trouble? Trouble?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Why, then I came to just the right place.”

“How is that?” asked the lady, sort of surprised like.

“Because I always try to help trouble, or those who are in it. Let me see now, I don’t believe I have the pleasure of knowing you,” and Uncle Wiggily sort of made his nose twinkle inquisitive like.

“Oh, you must have heard about me,” said the lady, with a smile. “I’m in Mother Goose’s book, you know. Listen to this:

“I am the Queen of Hearts,” said the lady, bowing politely.

“Pleased to meet you,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, also with a low bow. “So that is the trouble, eh? The Jack of Hearts has taken the tarts away?”

“Well, no, not exactly,” answered the Heart Queen. “You see, I haven’t yet made the tarts. But, when I do, I suppose the Jack will take them, and then there’ll be trouble, for Old King Cole specially wants them.”

“Why haven’t you yet made them?” asked the bunny uncle. “If it says in the Mother Goose book that you must make the tarts, why don’t you make them?”

“Because, in the first place,” answered the Queen of Hearts, sort of shivering like, “this isn’t a Summer day. And, in the second place, I don’t know how to make the tarts—that’s the trouble.”

“Well, that is easily mended,” spoke the bunny uncle. “I can’t make a Summer day out of a Spring one, but I can show you how to make tarts.”

“Oh, can you—and will you?” asked the Queen of Hearts, clapping her hands in delight.

“I can and will,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “I have often watched Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, my muskrat lady bungalow-keeper, make them, so I ought to know how.”

“Tell me,” said the Queen, “and we’ll do it.”

“You take flour and water and milk and sugar and a yeast cake and spices and make a pie crust,” said the bunny uncle. “Then you bake it in the oven after you have cut it out in little round pieces, some with three holes in, and some just plain.”

“Oh, how lovely that sounds!” cried the Queen, clapping her hands again. “I have all the things you need. Let’s make the tarts.”

“And when the crust is baked in the oven,” went on Mr. Longears, “you take out two pieces of tarts, put jam in between them, press them together, and—there you are.”

“Lovelier and more lovely!” cried the Queen. “Oh, I am so glad you happened to come along. Now we’ll begin.”

So she and Uncle Wiggily mixed up the sugar and spice, and other things nice, making the pie crust, out of which they cut round, flat pieces, some with three holes in, and some plain.

“Oh, what lovely tarts they’ll be!” laughed the Queen. “Isn’t it a shame that the Jack of Hearts must take them away?”

“Well, if it’s that way in the Mother Goose book, it can’t be helped,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But when he takes these tarts we’ll make some more.”

So the tarts were made and set aside to cool.

“Now we’ll hide behind the kitchen door,” said the Queen of Hearts, “and watch the Jack as he comes in to get them. I hope he doesn’t take them all.”

“Maybe he won’t,” said Uncle Wiggily.

Pretty soon, as the bunny gentleman and the Queen of Hearts were hiding, into the kitchen came the Jack of Hearts. He was a funny chap, with little candy hearts all over his clothes and cap.

“Ah, ha!” said the Jack, smacking his lips. “This is tart day. Here is where I have a fine feast! I’ll get the tarts of the Queen of Hearts.”

Laughing to himself, the Jack went up to the shelf where the tarts were cooling. He lifted one down, and took a big bite from it, saying:

“I’ll taste them before I take them away.”

But, no sooner had he tasted it than the Jack of Hearts he dropped that tart and, all excited like, he cried:

“Oh me! Oh my! Oh ice water and lemonade! Oh, how my mouth burns! I don’t want any of those tarts! Oh, no,” and away he ran, not taking one.

“Why, that’s queer,” said the queen. “He should have taken those hearts. That’s the way it is in the book.”

The bunny uncle looked at the tarts he and the Queen had made. He took a little taste of one, and then Uncle Wiggily said:

“No wonder the Jack didn’t want them. By mistake we have put red pepper in the tarts instead of red raspberry jam! They’re as hot as a stove. Oh dear!”

“Never mind,” said the Queen, sweetly. “We’ll make some more tarts, and this time we’ll do it right and put in the jam. Anyhow I’m glad, for now the Jack won’t want to take the new tarts I make.” And the Jack did not. He had had enough.

So the tarts were made over again by Uncle Wiggily and the Queen—right, this time, with real jam—and King Cole ate them and said they were fine. And if the paper boy doesn’t turn into a bottle of ink, and make the fountain pen go swimming with the goldfish, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the jumping cow.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice, old gentleman rabbit, started out from his hollow-stump bungalow one day, to take a walk. He hopped over the fields and through the woods, wondering whether or not he might meet with an adventure, when, after a little while, he came to the House that Jack Built.

And there, nicely wrapped up in a bag, the bunny uncle saw the malt that lay in the House that Jack Built. Malt, you know, is a sort of flour, out of which they make buckwheat cakes.

“My goodness!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, as he scratched his pink, twinkling nose, “I did not think I had come this far.”

He stood in front of the House that Jack Built, wondering whether or not he ought not go in and say “howdy do,” when he saw coming out of the house the rat that ate the malt, and the cat that caught the rat, and the dog that worried the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt that lay in the House that Jack Built.

“Well, this is very strange,” said Uncle Wiggily to himself. “They all seem to be running away!” And indeed they were. For the cat was chasing the rat and the dog was chasing the cat and the rat was chasing after its own shadow, so as to get away from the cat, and then, all of a sudden, out came Mother Goose herself.

“Oh, have you seen her, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Mother Goose. “I am so worried about her!”

“Seen whom? About whom are you worried?” asked the rabbit gentleman, politely.

“The jumping cow,” answered Mother Goose. “She’s gone!”

“I guess you mean the cow with the crumpled horn, don’t you?” asked the bunny uncle. “She’s the one, you know, that tossed the dog that worried the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt that lay in the House that Jack Built.”

“No, I don’t mean that cow,” answered Mother Goose. “I mean the jumping cow. She’s the worst cow for jumping you ever saw. She jumps over all the fences and stone walls and when we want her to give some milk for Little Tommie Tucker’s supper she isn’t to be found. I’ve looked everywhere for her, but I can’t find her. Oh, dear! Such trouble! I thought she might be here, in the House that Jack Built, with the Crumpled-Horn Cow. But she isn’t.”

“Ha! Just you leave it to me, if you please,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “I’ll find the jumping cow for you. I can start off in my automobile, with the bologna sausage tires, that go faster when you sprinkle pepper on them or in my clothes-basket airship, with toy circus balloons on the handles.”

“You had better take your airship,” said Mother Goose. “A jumping cow would be found up in the air, I think.”

“I think so myself,” said Uncle Wiggily. So he hurried back to the hollow-stump bungalow and got out his airship. In that he sailed over the woods and fields, looking for the jumping cow.

“Do, please, ask her to hurry back,” said Mother Goose. “For she has all the milk for supper, and Tommie Tucker and the Children of the Old Woman who Lives in a Shoe, are so hungry they don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll get her,” promised Uncle Wiggily.

On and on he sailed in his airship. But he could not see the jumping cow. Up high he sailed and down low, and finally, when he came close to the ground, near the place where Sammie Littletail, the boy rabbit, lived with his sister Susie and his father and mother, Uncle Wiggily heard Jollie Longtail, the mouse boy, singing a song that went like this:

“Hello, what’s that!” cried Uncle Wiggily, bringing his airship to a sudden stop and sailing down to earth. “What cow is that Jollie, that jumped over the moon?”

“Oh, Mother Goose’s cow,” answered the little mouse boy. “You see, Joie Kat, the little kitten boy, crawled inside the fiddle, having a game of tag with Tommie, his brother. And when Jack Sprat tried to play music on the fiddle it made such a funny noise that the cow, who was waiting for Little Boy Blue to blow his horn, gave a big jump, and away up over the moon she went. That’s the way it was,” said Jollie Longtail.

“I see,” answered Uncle Wiggily. “Well, in that case, I suppose I must go sailing up to the moon to find the jumping cow. She is needed to bring home the milk for Little Tommie Tucker’s supper.”

Just then along came Mother Goose once more.

“Oh, look!” she cried, pointing her broom up to the sky. “There’s my nice jumping cow now. She’s falling down from her jump over the moon. Oh, she’ll break her horns, surely. Oh, dear! What shall I do?”

“Do? Do nothing,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “I will do it myself. See, I have my airship. I’ll sail up and catch the jumping cow before she has time to fall. Then everything will be all right.”

“Oh, please do!” begged Mother Goose.

Up in his clothes-basket airship went Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman.

“Oh, dear!” cried Mother Goose, on the earth below. “That cow should have known better than to jump over the moon!”

“I think so myself,” said the Man in the Moon. “I tried to stop her, but I couldn’t.”

“Never mind,” said Uncle Wiggily. “It will be all right, I’m sure.”

Then he steered his airship right under the falling cow, who was no longer jumping. Instead, she was sailing toward the earth, with a piece of green cheese on one horn. She really had jumped over the moon, but she slipped, and that’s how the green cheese got on the tip of her horn.

“Here you are!” cried Uncle Wiggily, in his jolly voice, just like a trolley car conductor. “Plenty of room up in front.”

Then the jumping cow landed gently in the rabbit gentleman’s airship, and he brought her down to earth as lightly as a feather, and the cow was just in time with the milk for Little Tommie Tucker’s supper.

So this teaches you that Uncle Wiggily can do many things besides eating carrots and having the rheumatism, and if the egg beater doesn’t skip out to whip the rag doll’s carpets, to earn five cents for the moving pictures, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the pussies.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the kind old rabbit gentleman, was hopping along in the woods in front of his hollow-stump bungalow one morning, and, every now and then, he would stoop over and look at the ground.

“What are you doing, Wiggy, if I may ask?” inquired Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, who kept the bungalow nice and neat for the bunny uncle.

“You may ask, and I will tell you,” politely answered Mr. Longears. “I am looking to see if any flowers are growing in the woods.”

“What! Flowers growing this time of year?” cried Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy. “It is much too early!”

“Why, it was the first of Spring, the other day!” said Uncle Wiggily. “I should think the flowers would be waking up now, and putting their heads out from beneath the brown earth-blankets, under which they slept all winter.”

“Oh, no!” laughed Nurse Jane. “First we must have some April showers to bring May flowers.”

“Well, I am going to keep on looking,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I may find a flower in the woods, or, if I do not, I’ll have an adventure. Either one would be nice.”

So away hopped the bunny uncle, leaning on his red, white and blue barber-pole striped rheumatism crutch, which Nurse Jane had nicely speckled with pink candy for him on account of Spring coming.

And, all of a sudden, as Mr. Longears went along, he slipped in a little puddle of water, and—presto-chango! Off flew his glasses and they were broken all to pieces.

“Oh, dear!” cried Uncle Wiggily, picking up the bits. “That’s too bad. Now I can hardly see to get along. I must take these glasses to the blacksmith shop to have them mended. I hope I don’t lose my way, for, without my glasses, I am almost as blind as a bat or an owl in daylight. But I will do the best I can.”

With the pieces of his broken glasses in his pocket, Uncle Wiggily went along through the woods. He peered this way and that, for the sun hurt his eyes when he had no glasses, but still he could see a little bit. Then, all at once, Uncle Wiggily, looking through the trees, said:

“Why, here comes Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady, I do declare!”

Uncle Wiggily made his necktie tidy and smooth, and pulled down his vest, for he wanted to look nice. Then he made a low bow and said:

“How do you do, Mrs. Wibblewobble? I am glad to meet you in the woods.”

But there was no answer, and Uncle Wiggily said:

“Why, I wonder if she heard me? I hope Mrs. Wibblewobble isn’t getting deaf! I must speak louder.”

He looked again where he thought he had seen the duck lady, going a little nearer, and, lo! it was only a stump that looked like Mrs. Wibblewobble.

“Well, well!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I can’t see at all well without my glasses. What a mistake to make!”

He laughed and walked on, and, pretty soon he thought he saw Mrs. Stubtail, the lady bear, mother to Neddie and Beckie Stubtail.

“Why, how do you——” began Uncle Wiggily, and then he saw it was only a big black stone on the woodland path.

“Ha! Another mistake!” cried the bunny uncle, with a laugh. “I am making lots of them to-day. It comes of having such poor eye-sight!”

So he went on toward the blacksmith shop to have his glasses mended. A little later he thought a fallen log was Grandfather Goosey Gander, and, not long after that, he saw a pile of dried leaves and thought they were Uncle Butter, the goat gentleman. He was just going to shake paws with the leaves, when he came closer he saw that he had made another mistake.

“Well, well!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “It certainly is too bad not to have your glasses once you start wearing them.”

On he went, a little farther, and he came soon to a place where some bushes were growing. Up in the bushes a little way from the ground, Uncle Wiggily saw some soft, furry, fuzzy things perched on the branches.

“Oh, the dear little pussies!” cried the rabbit gentleman. “Some dog must have come along here and chased them up in the bushes. I’ll get them down. Don’t be afraid, little ones,” he said. “I won’t let anybody harm you. Come to your Uncle Wiggily!”

The bunny uncle hopped up and held out his paw to the fuzzy things. They did not speak to him.

“But that’s all right,” he said. “They are too frightened even to mew. I’ll take them to Mother Goose and she will give them some warm milk. Come along, Pussies!” said the rabbit gentleman.

But, though he went close to the bush, and called very gently, the pussies did not jump into his paws.

“I guess they are too frightened,” said the bunny uncle. “I’ll just break off the branch with the pussies on,” thought Mr. Longears, “and carry them home that way. Poor little pussies! Did a bad bow-wow dog scare you? Well, just come with your Uncle Wiggily, and it will be all right!”

So the bunny gentleman broke off the branch with the soft, fuzzy pussies on it, and away he walked through the woods.

“I’ll take them to Mother Goose,” he said, “and then I’ll go to the blacksmith shop and have my glasses mended.”

Uncle Wiggily soon was at the house of the lady who swept cobwebs out of the sky.

“Mother Goose! Mother Goose!” he cried. “I’ve brought you some little pussies on the branch of a bush. A dog chased and scared them up there, and they were afraid to come down. Please get them some warm milk with carrot sauce in.”

Mother Goose came running to the door. She looked at the fuzzy things Uncle Wiggily held out. Then she laughed.

“What’s the matter?” asked the bunny uncle. “Why don’t you take care of the poor pussies?”

“Pussies? Pussies?” laughed dear old Mother Goose, harder than before. “Those are pussy willows.”

“Pussy willows” said Uncle Wiggily, surprised like.

“Yes, they are the soft, fuzzy blossoms of the willow bush. They are plants and not an animal at all.”

“Well, well!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “That shows what it is to be without glasses. I certainly thought they were real pussies. I must hurry to the blacksmith’s to have my glasses fixed.”

So he did, and his glasses were soon mended; while Mother Goose put the pussy willows in water where they would blossom out into big cat-posies.

And if the stepladder doesn’t walk off with the cake of soap and have a birthday party for the broom and dust pan on the back stoop, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the leaves.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, stood out in front of his hollow-stump bungalow in the woods, one day, and looked carefully around. Then he glanced up at the blue sky.

“What is the matter?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady bungalow-keeper. “Are you looking for some one?”

“Well, no, not exactly,” replied the bunny uncle, slowly. “I was just thinking that perhaps I had better begin to do some Spring cleaning around my bungalow.”

“Spring cleaning! Do you mean inside or outside?” asked the muskrat lady, as she carefully wiped a bit of flour off the end of her nose with her tail, for she had been baking a cake.

“Oh, I mean outside, of course,” replied Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll leave you to look after the bungalow, inside, while I clean up outside. You see there are so many last year’s dried leaves about, here in the woods, that if they were to catch fire our bungalow might burn.”

“Mercy!” cried Nurse Jane. “I wouldn’t want that to happen. Oh, my!”

“No, indeed,” Uncle Wiggily said. “Once was enough. The last time we had a fire you and I had to board around with our friends. Still, it was not so bad as it might have been, for I met Mother Goose, and did some favors for her and her friends.”

“What were you thinking of doing to the leaves?” asked Nurse Jane, curious like and inquisitive.

“Why, I thought I’d rake them up in a pile and make a soft place, so if Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbit children, came along on their way home from school, they could jump on the leaves as they sometimes do in the hay.”

“Very good,” Nurse Jane said. “You rake up the leaves and I’ll wash the dishes.”

So Uncle Wiggily began. For a rake he used the dried branch from a tree. It had many little ends to it, almost like the teeth of a rake, that branch had.

“I wonder if a rake ever gets the toothache?” thought Uncle Wiggily, as he pulled and poked the leaves into piles. “If it does, it must hurt very much because there are so many teeth.”

But the bunny uncle did not have a real rake, only a tree branch, which he used as one, and that had no teeth to ache, I’m glad to say.

“It will be good to get the layers of dead, dried leaves off the ground,” said Uncle Wiggily, “for soon the April showers will bring the May flowers, and they find it easier to spring up if there is no blanket of leaves over them to hold them down.”

The bunny uncle soon had many piles of soft, dried leaves, and in a little while along came Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbit children, and into the leaves they jumped, off a stump, bouncing up and down like rubber balls.

Pretty soon Uncle Wiggily heard a voice saying:

“Oh, dear, isn’t it too bad? Yes, it’s even three, four, five, six, seven bad! That’s what it is!”

“Ha! Some one in trouble!” said Uncle Wiggily, dropping his tree-branch rake and running back to the pile of leaves. “I suppose either Sammie or Susie has fallen down, and bumped one of their noses. I must help them up!”

But when Uncle Wiggily got there the cupboard was bare—oh, no, excuse me, if you please. That’s in another story. I mean when the bunny uncle reached the pile of leaves where Sammie and Susie had been playing neither one of the rabbit children was in sight.

“Oh, my!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “They must be all covered up with the leaves! I’ll have to dig them out! No wonder it’s two, six, seven bad! Poor rabbits under the leaves.”

With his paws he began digging at the piles of leaves, scattering them all over, after his hard work of raking them up. But as he went deeper and deeper he could see no signs of the bunny children. And then, from somewhere behind him, Uncle Wiggily heard the sad voice again saying:

“Oh, dear! It’s too bad! Yes, it’s two, three and even sixteen-eleven bad. Oh, dear!”

Turning quickly, Uncle Wiggily saw Jimmie Wibblewobble, the boy duck, with an empty bag over his wing shoulder.

“Why, Jimmie! Is that you?” asked the bunny uncle, in surprise. “I thought it was Sammie and Susie Littletail. They were playing in these dried leaves a while ago, but now I can’t find them, and I fear they may be covered up so far down that I can never get them out.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Uncle Wiggily,” said Jimmie, the boy duck. “Sammie and Susie are all right. I met them running down a woodland path a little while ago, as I came along, and they were talking of what fun they had had in the leaves. They got tired and ran away when you weren’t looking. That’s why you can’t find them under the leaves. But, oh, dear! Two, sixteen-eleven bad!”

“Why, what’s the matter with you?” asked Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “Are you in trouble, Jimmie?”

“I am, Uncle Wiggily.”

“What kind of trouble, Jimmie, my duck boy?”

“Feather-trouble,” answered the Wibblewobble chap.

“Feather-trouble?” repeated Uncle Wiggily, sort of surprised like and astonished. “Feather-trouble?”

“Yes. You see my mother sent me with a bag of our best duck feathers for Mother Goose to make a feather bed from. Well, all at once, some strong March wind came dancing by, turned the bag inside out and blew away every feather! And, what to do I don’t know, for there are no more feathers at our coop. And if Mother Goose doesn’t have feathers for her bed she will feel badly. Oh, dear! Such trouble!”

Uncle Wiggily thought for a moment. Then he said:

“Ho, Jimmie! I see a way out of your trouble. Fill your bag with some of these soft, dried leaves. They will be nearly as good as feathers for Mother Goose, and, at the same time, you will be doing me a favor by taking away the leaves, so the flowers can grow.”

“Oh, fine!” cried Jimmie. So he took a big bag of the leaves, which Mother Goose said were as good to sleep on as feathers, and thus everything came out just right, you see, and Sammie and Susie weren’t lost under the leaves after all, for which Uncle Wiggily was very glad.

And if the fried egg doesn’t try to hide in the apple dumpling and make the peach stone jump over the shortcake, when we have company for supper, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the wise man.

“Rat-a-tat-tat!” came a knock on the door of the hollow-stump bungalow, where Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, lived.

“I’ll see who it is,” he called to Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy and the muskrat lady housekeeper was glad of that, for her paws were in the dishwater up to her elbows, and you know how it is yourself; you don’t like to answer the bell with your hands all soap bubbles, like a pipe.

So Uncle Wiggily went to the door, and, standing there, he saw Nannie Wagtail, the little goat girl. And there were tears in Nannie’s eyes, and she was trying to wipe them away with the tips of her horns. But when she did this she only tickled herself and she had to laugh.

But she didn’t want to laugh; she wanted to cry, for she was sad. And you know how it is yourself—you can’t laugh and cry at the same time; can you?

“Why, Nannie! What is the matter?” asked Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “Come in and tell me all your troubles!”

“Oh, dear! Boo hoo! Hoo boo! I have lots of troubles!” said the little goat girl. “My best doll, Priscilla Spicecake Orangejuice, is gone.”

“Gone!” cried Uncle Wiggily.

“Taken!” exclaimed Nannie. “I was out in front of our house a while ago playing dolls with Beckie Stubtail, the little girl bear. Beckie had her doll, Esmeralda Pancake Eggturner, with her, and we were having a lovely time.

“But I laid my doll down to go in the house to get some cookies, and when I came out my doll was gone, and Beckie was crying.”

“Why, what happened?” asked Uncle Wiggily, surprised like.

“Beckie said a man came running along, grabbed up my doll, and before she could stop him he hurried off into the woods with my dear Priscilla Spicecake Orangejuice!”

“Oh, that’s too bad!” said the bunny uncle. “Now don’t you cry any more. You just tell me what sort of a man he was who took your doll and I’ll go after him and make him give it back, even if I have to get the circus elephant to squirt water on him from the lemonade barrel. Tell me what sort of a man he was.”

“He was a man who wore glasses,” said Nannie.

“Say no more!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I think I know exactly who he is! I’ll go after him at once.”

So the bunny uncle, telling Nurse Jane not to wait lunch for him, started off over the fields and through the woods to look for Nannie’s doll. On the way he met Mother Goose, and he asked that old lady:

“Are any of your friends the kind of a man who wears glasses, and would take a little goat girl’s doll?”

“Well, yes,” said Mother Goose, slowly, “the Wise Man might. You see he spoiled his eyes, reading so much to make him wise, that he has to wear glasses. But he is really very kind. I think he only took Nannie’s doll for a joke, or perhaps he wants to get her another just like it and took that along for a sample.”

“Perhaps,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But, anyhow, I’ll find him and ask him about it.”

So he walked and hopped on and on through the woods to where the Wise Man used to live, and pretty soon, from behind a big bush, the bunny uncle heard some one singing this song:

“Ha!” said Uncle Wiggily softly. “I thought so! The wise man! I have found him! Now to see if he has Nannie’s doll!”

Uncle Wiggily peeked through the bush, which was a blackberry one, only there were no berries on it now. On the other side, sitting on the ground, was the Wise Man, wearing glasses, and he had Nannie’s doll in his hands. He was talking to the doll, something like this:

“Now, little doll, don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. I’m just going to toss you into the berry bush, and scratch out both your eyes. But that won’t hurt, for as soon as I see your eyes are out, with all my might and main, I’ll toss you in another bush and scratch them in again. There you go!”

Before Uncle Wiggily could stop him, the Wise Man had tossed Nannie’s doll, Priscilla Spicecake Orangejuice, into the berry bush. Then the man cried:

“Yes, your eyes are scratched out, all right, dollie! Now to scratch them in again!” And, before Uncle Wiggily could hop any closer to stop him, the Wise Man tossed again into the bush, the poor doll. And when she fell down the Wise Man carefully picked her up, and, looking at her, said:

“Alas! Alack a-day! Woe is me! The eyes aren’t scratched in again at all! Oh, dear, what shall I do? I’ll have to get the little goat girl another doll.”

Uncle Wiggily jumped out from behind the berry bush.

“What do you mean?” asked the bunny uncle. “Why do you treat a poor doll so? Look, her hair has come off, and her eyes have fallen out! Oh, my!” and from the ground he picked up the doll’s hair-wig and eyes, which were of glass, fastened together with wire.

“I’m sorry,” said the Wise Man. “I’m very sorry this has happened. But I read about the Wise Man in the Mother Goose book, who jumped into a berry bush and got a new pair of eyes. I thought I could do the same as he, for I’m tired of glasses.

“But I thought I’d try it on a doll first, to see if it were true. So, not having any doll of my own I took Nannie’s, meaning no harm. But see what I have done!” he said, sadly. “I have scratched out her eyes and her wig is off, and I can’t put the eyes back again, nor yet the wig. It’s a good thing I didn’t jump into the scratchy bush myself. It is better to wear glasses than have no eyes at all.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Uncle Wiggily, and he felt sorry for the poor Wise Man. “But never mind,” went on the bunny uncle. “I know a monkey-doodle gentleman, who mends broken dolls. I’ll take Priscilla Spicecake Orangejuice to him, and he can fasten her eyes in again and glue on her wig.”

“Will you? Then please do!” said the Wise Man. “I’ll pay the monkey-doodle, and here is five cents extra for little Nannie. Tell her I’m sorry I borrowed her doll and I’ll never do it again.”

“All right,” cheerfully said Uncle Wiggily, “and don’t you try to scratch your eyes out, and in again.”

“I won’t,” promised the Wise Man. “Glasses are good enough for me.”

The monkey-doodle gentleman soon fixed Nannie’s doll as good as ever, so the eyes opened and shut, and the little goat girl was happy once more, when Uncle Wiggily brought back Priscilla Spicecake Orangejuice. Thus, you see, everything came out all right, as I generally try to make it.

And if the crazy quilt doesn’t jump into the rag bag and get lost so the pillow case has no place to sleep, when it comes home from the moving pictures, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the tailors.

“Well, where are you going this morning, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, of the rabbit gentleman, as he lifted his red, white and blue-striped rheumatism crutch down off the hat rack, and opened the front door.

“Oh, I’m just going out for a hop through the woods,” replied the bunny uncle. “Mother Goose said that Grandfather Goosey Gander was coming to pay her a visit to-day, and, as I haven’t seen him in some time, I thought I’d go over myself and have a little talk.”

“Very well,” went on Nurse Jane, “and on your way back I wish you would bring me a spool of thread.”

“A spool of thread? Why, certainly,” promised Uncle Wiggily, and off he hopped through the woods until he came to where Mother Goose lived. Her house was next door to the shoe, in which lived the Old Woman Who Had So Many Children She Didn’t Know What To Do.

“Good morning, Mother Goose,” said Uncle Wiggily, politely. “I hope I see you well. Has Grandpa Goosey Gander come yet?”

“Not yet. I am expecting him every minute. Sit down and make yourself at home,” and Mother Goose dusted a chair.

Uncle Wiggily sat down, and he and Mother Goose were talking about the best way to give the most bread and jam to animal children, when along came Grandpa Goosey.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said, all sort of flustered like, “but I lost a button off my coat. I stopped in a tailor’s to have it sewed on, but, would you believe me? There isn’t a tailor to be found in Woodland—not one in this whole forest!”

“Nonsense!” cried Mother Goose. “Why, there are four-and-twenty tailors here—just as many as there were blackbirds baked in the pie that was set before the king. No tailors to be found out of all those four-and-twenty? Nonsense! There must be!” and she swept cobwebs down out of the sky just for fun.

“Not a tailor!” said Grandpa Goosey. “I looked all over for one. Their shops were open, but the tailors were gone, and so I had to come without a button on my coat.”

“Never mind,” said Mother Goose. “I’ll sew it on for you,” and she did.

“That reminds me,” said Uncle Wiggily, after they had talked a bit. “Speaking of tailors, I’m to bring Nurse Jane a spool of thread. I think I’ll be hopping along. If I can’t find any tailor in his shop, where I can buy the thread, I’ll have to go to the five and ten cent store.”

So he said good-by to Mother Goose and Grandpa Gander, and away hopped the bunny uncle gentleman over the fields and through the woods.

“I wonder if I could find those four-and-twenty tailors?” thought Uncle Wiggily. “Four-and-twenty—that’s just two dozen—quite a number. I wonder why they all left their shops? I wonder——?”

And just then from behind some bushes he heard some voices saying:

“You go up and jab her!”

“No, you do it!”

“I’m afraid!”

“Well, so am I. Hi there, who has a yardstick? Let whoever has a yardstick go up and jab her!”

“And let some one tickle her with a needle.”

“You do it!”

“No, you. I’m afraid.”

“Well, so am I! Boo!”

“Goodness me gracious sakes alive and some hooks and eyes!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “What does all this mean? Who’s afraid?” He peeked through the bushes and there he saw, on the woodland path, a lot of men with needles, pins, spools of thread, tape measures, yardsticks, thimbles, scissors, linings, pockets, buttonholes and all things like that.

“Who are you?” asked Uncle Wiggily, in surprise.

“I’ll tell you who we are,” answered one of the twenty-four, (for there were just two dozen of them) as the rabbit gentleman could count. Then some one sang this song:

And as the tailor said that he turned and ran through the woods as fast as ever he could run, all the other twenty-three running after him.

“Oh, my! Oh, me! Oh, dear! This is too funny!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Four-and-twenty tailors afraid of a snail, even if she did put out her horns like a Kylow cow. I say, tailors! Come back! Come back!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Mother Goose is worried about you. Come back!”

“We’re afraid of the snail!” said one, who had sung the song.

“Nonsense!” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “She wouldn’t hurt a lightning bug! Come here, I’ll show you how to make her pull in her horns!”

Slowly and carefully the four-and-twenty tailors came back on their tippy-tiptoes.

“What did you want to catch a snail for, anyhow?” asked the bunny uncle.

“Make her put in her horns so she won’t look so much like a cow and scare us, and we’ll tell you,” said the singing tailor.

Uncle Wiggily laughed and suddenly cried:

Then the snail quickly pulled in her horns and crawled away and she didn’t hurt the tailors any, and they didn’t tickle her with a needle, thimble or even a spool of hooks and eyes.

“We just wanted to see if we could catch a snail,” said the singing tailor. “We didn’t mean to hurt her, but it says in Mother Goose’s book that four-and-twenty tailors went out to catch a snail, and, as we were not very busy this morning, we went out. But, oh! how fierce she did look with her horns! I’m not going snail-hunting any more.”

“Nor I,” cried the other twenty-three tailors in a chorus. Then they thanked Uncle Wiggily for having driven the snail away, as he did, by making believe Jimmie Wibblewobble, the duck boy, was coming after her (since ducks like snails very much). And the tailors each gave Uncle Wiggily a spool of thread, so Nurse Jane had all she wanted, and Grandpa Goosey’s button was sewed on.

And if the basket of soap bubbles doesn’t fall down-stairs and spill ink on the white table cloth just as it is going to the dance, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the bat.

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice little boy bear—Oh, please be so kind as to excuse me, as the telephone girl says when she rings the dinner bell at supper time. I mean Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old rabbit gentleman, put on his red, white and blue-striped rheumatism tall silk hat and——

Eh? What’s that? Something else wrong? Oh, yes; to be sure. I meant to say he took his red, white and blue-striped rheumatism crutch, and put his tall silk hat on over his ears, and then he started out of his hollow-stump bungalow for a walk.

I don’t know what’s the matter with me in this story—making so many mistakes—unless it was that I danced the fox-trot backward the other night, and it turned out to be a goose-walk. Anyhow, I’ll try to be more careful after this.

Out stepped Uncle Wiggily, starting off toward the woods, but he had not gone very far before Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, called to him.

“Where are you going, Uncle Wiggily? Don’t you know that it is after supper, and will soon be dark? Then why do you go to the woods?”

“I want an adventure,” answered the bunny uncle. “I haven’t had one to-day. And, as for the dark, the moon will soon be up, and give me good light. Have no fear, Nurse Jane, I will soon be back safely.”

So Nurse Jane had no fear and Uncle Wiggily hopped on and on, over the fields and through the woods. All of a sudden he passed the house where Susie Littletail, the little rabbit girl, lived.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily,” called Mrs. Littletail, the bunny mother. “If you see Susie, will you please tell her to come home at once? Her supper is quite cold, though I will warm up the carrot gravy for her.”

“I’ll tell her,” promised the bunny uncle. “Where is she?”

“She went over to play with Lulu and Alice Wibblewobble, the two duck girls,” was the answer, “and she must be having a fine time, for she’s been there ever so long.”

“I wonder what sort of an adventure I shall have this evening,” thought the bunny uncle. “Yesterday I drove away the snail that was scaring the four-and-twenty tailors, but no tailors would be out now, after dark. However, the moon will soon be up, and then I will have light enough to see an adventure if one happens along.”

Going a little farther, Uncle Wiggily came to where Lulu and Alice Wibblewobble, the duck girls, lived in a nice pen, with their father and mother and their brother Jimmie.

“Is Susie Littletail in there?” asked Uncle Wiggily, looking over the fence. “Her mother said she came over here to play, but hasn’t come home yet. Is she there?”

“No, Uncle Wiggily,” answered Lulu, wagging her tail wobbily like. “Susie left here some time ago. She said she was going to run home to supper.”

“It’s queer I didn’t meet her,” said the bunny uncle. “But, perhaps, she might have gone home by another path. I daresay she is all right. I’ll walk along a little farther, and then if I don’t see her I’ll go back.”

Well, Uncle Wiggily was going on and on, when, all at once from behind an old stump, he heard a sad little voice crying, and saying:

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I’m afraid to go home, and I’m afraid to stay here. I don’t know what to do!”

“My! That sounds like trouble of the very worst kind!” spoke Uncle Wiggily, in his jolly voice. “I must see who it is, and if I can help them.”

Uncle Wiggily started for the stump, and then he happened to think:

“Ah, perhaps that might be the skillery-scalery alligator with the humps on his tail, making believe to be in trouble just to get me near enough so he can catch me. I had better be careful.”

So Uncle Wiggily carefully peeked around the corner before going any closer to the stump, and there, sitting down on a stone behind it in the moonlight, was Susie Littletail, the rabbit girl, herself.

“Why, Susie!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “What are you doing here? Your mother is looking for you, and so am I. Why don’t you go home?”

“’Cause I’m afraid, Uncle Wiggily,” and Susie cried a few tears.

“What are you afraid of?” asked the bunny uncle. “Surely not the dark. That can’t hurt you, and besides it will soon be moonlight.”

“No, I’m not afraid of the dark, Uncle Wiggily,” said Susie, “but I’m afraid of the bat.”

“The bat?” cried the bunny uncle, astonished like.

“Yes; he’s a big bird with wings, but he has ears and looks like a rat. I’m afraid he’ll get tangled in my fur, or else that he’ll bite me. Oh, there he is now!” and Susie pointed to something black, like a bird, flying to and fro in the darkness.

“Yes, that is a bat,” said Uncle Wiggily, “but it will not hurt you. It is only flying around to catch mosquitoes and other bugs that come out mostly at night. A bat, like an owl, can see in the dark. He won’t hurt you.”

“Oh, but I’m afraid,” said Susie. “I started from the Wibblewobble house a long time ago, to go home, but I saw the bat flying around and I hid. I dassen’t go home.”

“Nonsense!” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll fix it for you. I’ll play a little joke on the bat and get him out of the way until I can lead you home.”

So Uncle Wiggily recited this little verse from Mother Goose:

Uncle Wiggily put his tall silk hat on the ground, and, surely enough, the bat crawled under it to see if there were any bacon there. And, before he could come out Uncle Wiggily hurried home with Susie, who wasn’t afraid any more, not with the bunny uncle to hold her paw.

Then Uncle Wiggily, not being mistaken, got a cake from Nurse Jane and took it back to the bat, also getting his tall silk hat. And the bat was very much obliged, for the cake, and he said he never would have tangled himself in Susie’s fur anyhow, so she need not have been afraid.

“But I’m glad she’s safely home,” said the bat.

“So am I,” said Uncle Wiggily.

And I guess Susie was also.

But if the button-hook doesn’t get tangled up in the dog’s tail, and ride out to where the shoe-horn is playing tunes for the rubber heels to dance the lame duck, I’ll tell you next——

Oh, but hold on, if you please. I’m not going to tell you any more stories in this book, for it is already quite well filled, as you can see for yourself. So if I write any more tales they will have to go in another big volume like this.

That’s what I’ll do, if you like, and the next book will be called, “Uncle Wiggily and His Friends,” and will tell of the different things that happened to the bunny uncle when he went calling on all the animal folk that live in Woodland. So, while I am getting that book ready, I will say good-bye.