forgotten all about it. Yes, indeed, I must be careful! I am living
near the real children, now, and some of them might think it fun to
explode a torpedo under my pink, twinkling nose, or try to fasten a
fire-cracker to my little tail."
"That's what I was thinking of," went on Nurse Jane. For Uncle
Wiggily's bungalow, while still in the woods, was near to the homes of
some boys and girls. And though only one boy, so far, had been bad to
the bunny (and this boy soon turned good), there was no telling what
might happen.
So as Uncle Wiggily hopped along the forest path, he took care not to
get too far away from the bushes, behind and under which he could hide.
For sometimes boys and girls came to the forest, and once a Kite Boy
was lost, and the bunny helped him find his way home, you may remember.
"Hello, Uncle Wiggily!" suddenly called a voice, and Mr. Longears
quickly jumped around, thinking it might be a real boy or girl. But it
was only Neddie Stubtail, the little boy bear.
"I've been buying my fire-crackers," said Neddie to his uncle, the
bunny. "I'm going to have lots of fun Fourth of July," and he showed
Mr. Longears a bundle of dry sticks, painted red, white and blue like
the bunny's rheumatism crutch.
You must know that in Animal Land the boys and girls have the same sort
of fun you children do on holidays, but in a different manner. Instead
of real fire-crackers, that have to be set off with a match, or piece
of punk, with sparks that, perhaps, burn you, the animal children get
some dried sticks. These they break, with loud, cracking sounds, but
without any fire. And they have lots of fun. After the sticks are
broken they can be put in the stove to boil the tea kettle.
"Did you get your sister, Beckie, any Fourth of July things?" asked
Uncle Wiggily of the boy bear.
"Oh, yes, I got her some little stick crackers," answered Neddie.
"That's good!" spoke Mr. Longears. Then he went on through the woods,
meeting Toddle and Noodle Flat-Tail the beaver boys, Joie, Tommie and
Kittie Kat the kittens, Nannie and Billie Wagtail the goats, and many
other animal boys and girls. All of them called:
"Hello, Uncle Wiggily! Happy Fourth of July!"
And the bunny answered back:
"Thank you! I wish you the same!"
Thus hopping through the woods, meeting the animal children, and
learning of the fun they were to have next day, the bunny rabbit
gentleman at length came to the end of the forest. A little farther on
were the houses and homes of real boys and girls, some of whom had been
helped by Mr. Longears.
"I think this is as far as I had better go, seeing it's so close to
the Fourth of July," thought Uncle Wiggily. "If the real children are
anything like those of my animal friends who live in the woods, they'll
be shooting off their crackers and torpedoes ahead of time."
And, just as he said that, Uncle Wiggily heard a loud:
"Bang! Bang!"
The bunny jumped to one side, and hid under the broad leaf of a burdock
plant. Then he laughed.
"I thought that was a hunter-man's gun," whispered Uncle Wiggily. "But
I guess it was some boy setting off a fire-cracker. I need not have
been afraid."
He was just going to hop along a little farther, before turning back to
his hollow stump bungalow when, all at once he saw a hammock swinging
between two trees near the edge of the wood.
In the hammock lay a boy with a thin, pale face, and beside him sat
a nurse, gently pulling on a rope that caused the little nest-like
swinging bed to sway to and fro.
"Oh ho!" thought Uncle Wiggily. "A sick boy! I'm sorry for him! He
won't be able to run around and have fun on Fourth of July as Jackie
and Peetie Bow Wow will."
And then the bunny heard the boy in the hammock speaking. And, being
able, as he was of late, to understand the talk of real persons, Uncle
Wiggily heard the boy say:
"Do you think I'll ever be able to run around again, and have fun, and
shoot off fire-crackers?"
"Of course you will," the nurse answered cheerfully.
"But I can't have any fire-crackers now, can I?" asked the boy,
timidly, as though knowing what the answer would be.
"No, Buddie! You are not quite well enough," the nurse gently replied.
"No fire-crackers for you!"
"How about torpedoes?"
"You couldn't have those, either, I'm afraid," and the nurse smiled as
she leaned over to give the boy a drink of orange juice.
"Oh, dear!" sighed the boy in the hammock, just like that. "Oh, dear!"
Uncle Wiggily felt very sorry for him.
"I wish I could do something," thought the bunny gentleman. "This
boy won't have much fun on the Fourth of July--not even as much fun
as Curly and Floppy Twistytail, the piggie chaps, will have throwing
corncobs against a tin pan and making believe they are skyrockets."
"Oh, dear!" again sighed the boy in the hammock. "Oh, dear!"
"What's the matter now?" asked his nurse.
"I don't s'pose I could even have a Roman candle, or a pinwheel, could
I?" the invalid asked.
"Oh, indeed no!" laughed the nurse. "What a funny chap you are!"
But the boy didn't feel very funny.
Uncle Wiggily twinkled his pink nose. Then he put his tall, silk hat
firmly on his head and, tucking under his paw his red, white and blue
striped rheumatism crutch, off through the woods hopped the bunny uncle.
"I'm going to get some Fourth of July for that boy," said Mr. Longears.
"He simply must have some."
Uncle Wiggily spent some time hopping here and there through the woods,
and early the next morning, when the real boys and girls were shooting
off real fire-crackers and torpedoes, and when the animal lads and
lassies were cracking sticks and making torpedoes from broad, green
leaves, Mr. Longears hopped to where the boy was, once more, swinging
in his hammock.
The boy's head was turned to one side, and he was looking at some of
his friends, over in the vacant lots, setting off fire-crackers. Uncle
Wiggily, when the nurse wasn't looking, tossed into the hammock, from
the bush behind which the bunny was hidden, a bundle of green things.
They fell near the boy's hands.
Hardly knowing what he was doing the sick lad pinched one of the green
things between his fingers.
"Pop!" it went.
"What's that?" cried the nurse. "It sounded like a fire-cracker."
The boy pinched another green leaf-like ball between his fingers.
"Pop!" sounded again, as the ball burst.
"Why," cried the nurse. "That's like a torpedo! What have you there,
Buddie?"
"I don't know," the boy answered. "But these round, green balls, that
burst and pop when I squeeze them, fell into my hammock. There's a lot
of 'em! I can pinch them and make a noise for Fourth of July."
"So you can!" exclaimed the nurse, pinching one herself, and jumping
when it went "Pop!"
"And they won't hurt me, will they?" asked the boy.
"No," answered the nurse, "they won't hurt you at all. They must have
fallen off this tree, but I never knew, before, that such things as
green fire-crackers grew on trees!"
"Ha! Ha!" laughed Uncle Wiggily to himself, hidden under a bush. "She
doesn't know I brought the puff balls to the boy."
For that is what the bunny had done. In the woods he had found the
green puff balls, inside which were the seeds of the plant. Later on,
in the fall, the puff balls would be dry, and would crackle when you
touched them, opening to scatter the seeds. But now, being green, and
filled with air, they burst with a Fourth of July noise when squeezed.
"Oh, now I can have some fun!" laughed the sick boy, as he cracked one
puff ball after another. "Hurrah! Now I'm celebrating Fourth of July!"
And he was. Uncle Wiggily had helped him, and the bunny gentleman had
brought enough puff balls to last all day.
"Pop! Pop!" That is how they sounded as the boy pinched them in his
hammock. Some were large, like big fire-crackers, and others were
small, like little torpedoes.
"Oh, what a lovely Fourth of July!" sighed the boy, when evening came
to put the sun to bed, and the nurse wheeled the boy into the house.
And then, when it grew dark, Uncle Wiggily called together ten thousand
firefly-lightning bugs, and they flittered and fluttered about the
porch, on which the boy had been taken after supper. The fireflies made
pinwheels of themselves, they went up like skyrockets, they leaped
about in bunches like the balls from Roman candles and finally, when
it was time to go to bed, they took hold of each others' legs and,
clinging together, spelled out:
[Illustration: "Oh, it's just like real fireworks!"]
"Oh, it's just like real fireworks!" cried the happy boy.
"I'm glad he liked it!" said Uncle Wiggily, as he hopped home to his
hollow stump bungalow.
So if the pussy cat doesn't claw the tail off the letter Q and make it
look like a big, round O, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and
the little boy's skates.
STORY XIII
UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE SKATES
There was once a little boy to whom Santa Claus brought a pair of
skates at Christmas. And, of course, that boy, as soon as he saw the
shiny, steel runners, wished that the pond would freeze over so that he
might try his new playthings.
"When do you s'pose there'll be skating?" he asked his mother again and
again, for, as yet, there was only a "skim" of ice on the pond.
"Oh, pretty soon," his mother would answer. "You mustn't go skating
when the ice is too thin, you know. If you did you would break through,
into the cold water."
"And that would spoil my skates, wouldn't it?" asked the boy.
"Yes, but besides that you might be drowned, or catch cold and be very
ill," Mother said. "So keep off the ice with your new skates until the
pond has frozen good and thick."
"Yes'm, I will," promised the little boy, and, really, he meant to keep
his word. But as the days passed, and the weather was not quite cold
enough to freeze thick ice, the little boy became tired of waiting.
Every chance he had, after school, he would go down to the edge of the
pond, and throw stones on the ice to see how thick it was. Often the
stones would break through, and fall into the cold, black water with a
"thump!" Then the boy would know the ice was not thick enough.
"I don't want to fall through like a stone," he would say, and back to
his house he would go with his new skates dangling and jingling at his
back, over which they were hung by a strap.
But one day, when the boy threw a large stone on the ice of the pond,
instead of breaking through, the rock only made a dent and stayed there.
"Oh, hurray!" cried the boy. "I guess it's strong enough to hold me
now! I'm going skating!"
However, first he started to walk on the edge of the ice near the
shore, and when he did so, and heard cracking sounds, he jumped quickly
back.
"I guess I'd better not try it yet," said the boy to himself. "I'll
wait a little while until it freezes harder."
So he sat down by the edge of the pond to wait for the ice to freeze
harder. But as he sat there, and saw how white and shiny it was, and
as he looked at his new skates, which he had only put on in the house,
that boy couldn't wait another minute.
He walked along the shore a little farther, to a place where the ice
seemed more hard and shiny and there, after throwing some stones, and
venturing out a little way, finding that there was no cracking sound,
the little boy made up his mind to try to skate. There was no one else
on the pond--no other boys and girls, and it was a bit lonesome. But
the boy was so eager to try his new skates that he did not think of
this.
Down he sat on the ground, and began putting on his Christmas skates.
And it was just about this time that Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, Uncle
Wiggily's muskrat lady housekeeper, happened to look out of the window
of the hollow stump bungalow. The bunny's bungalow was so hidden in the
woods, near the pond, that few boys or girls ever saw the queer little
house. But Uncle Wiggily could see them, as they came to the woods
winter and summer, and often he was able to help them.
"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Nurse Jane, as she looked out of the
window a second time.
"What's the matter?" asked Uncle Wiggily, who was just finishing
his breakfast of lettuce bread and carrot coffee, with some turnip
marmalade.
"Why, there's a boy--a real boy and not one of the animal
chaps--getting ready to go skating!" said the muskrat lady, for she
could see the boy putting on his skates.
"That ice isn't thick enough for real boys or girls to skate on," the
bunny gentleman said. "It would be all right for Sammie Littletail, or
Johnnie or Billie Bushytail, but real boys are too heavy--much heavier
than my nephew Sammie the rabbit, or than the bushytail squirrel chaps."
"Well, this boy is going on all the same," cried Nurse Jane. "And
I know he'll break through, and he'll frighten his mother into a
conniption fit!"
"That will be too bad!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, as he wiped a little
of the turnip marmalade off his whiskers, where it had fallen by
mistake. "I must try to save him if he does fall in!"
"It would be better to keep him from going on the ice," spoke Nurse
Jane. "Safety first, you know!"
"If I could speak boy language I'd hop down there and tell him the ice
is too thin," answered Uncle Wiggily. "But though I know what the boys
and girls say, I cannot, myself, speak their talk. However, I think I
know a way to save this boy, if he happens to break through the ice."
"Well, he's almost sure to break through," declared Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy,
"so you'd better hurry."
"No sooner said than done!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, and, catching up
his red, white and blue striped rheumatism crutch, and putting on his
fur cap (for the day was cold), away the bunny hopped from his hollow
stump bungalow.
Instead of going to the place where the boy, with his skates fastened
on his shoes, was about to try the ice, the bunny gentleman went to the
house of some friends of his. The house would seem queer to you, for
all it looked like was a pile of sticks half buried in the frozen pond.
But in this house lived a family of beavers--queer animals whose fur is
so warm and thick that they can swim in ice water and not feel chilly.
In fact the beavers had to dive down under the ice and water to get
into their winter home.
"Are Toodle and Noodle in the house?" asked Uncle Wiggily, as he
reached the stick-house. On shore, not far from it, was Grandpa
Whackum, the old beaver gentleman, with his broad, flat tail.
"Why, yes, Toodle and Noodle are inside," answered Grandpa Whackum.
"Shall I call them out?"
"If you please," spoke Uncle Wiggily. "I want them to come and help me
save a boy who, I think, is going to break through the thin ice with
his new skates."
"That will be too bad!" exclaimed Grandpa Whackum. Then with his broad
tail he pounded or "whacked" on the ground, and soon up through a hole
in the ice came swimming Toodle and Noodle Flat-Tail, the two beaver
boys.
[Illustration: "Oh, hello, Uncle Wiggily!"]
"Oh, hello, Uncle Wiggily!" they called. "We're glad to see you!"
"Hello!" answered the bunny gentleman. "Will you come with me, and help
save a real boy?"
"Of course," said Toodle, shaking off some ice water from his fur coat.
"He won't try to catch us, will he?" asked Noodle.
"I think not," the bunny gentleman replied. "If what I think is going
to happen, does really happen, that boy will be too surprised to catch
anything but a cold! Come along, beaver chaps!"
So Toodle and Noodle, wet and glistening from having dived out of their
house, and down under water to come up through the hole in the ice,
followed Uncle Wiggily. The sun and wind soon dried their fur.
"There's the boy," said Uncle Wiggily, as he and the beaver chaps
reached the edge of the pond. "He's skating on thin ice. He'll go
through in a minute!"
And, surely enough, hardly had the bunny spoken than there was a
cracking sound, the ice broke beneath the boy's feet and into the dark,
cold water he fell.
"Oh! Oh!" cried the boy. "Help me, somebody! Oh! Oh!"
"Ha! It's a good thing Nurse Jane saw him!" said Uncle Wiggily. "Quick
now, Toodle and Noodle! I brought you along because you have such good,
sharp teeth--much sharper and better than mine are for gnawing down
trees. I can gnaw off the bark, but you can nibble all the way through
a tree and make it fall."
"Is that what you want us to do?" asked Toodle.
"Yes," answered Uncle Wiggily. "We'll go close to shore, where the boy
has fallen in. Near him is a tree. You'll gnaw that so it will fall
outward across the ice, and he can reach up, take hold of it and pull
himself out of the hole."
By this time the poor boy was floundering around in the cold water. He
tried to get hold of the edges of the ice around the hole through which
he had fallen, but the ice broke in his hands.
"Help! Help!" he cried.
"We're going to help you," answered Uncle Wiggily, but, of course, he
spoke animal language which the boy did not understand. But Toodle and
Noodle understood, and quickly running to the edge of the shore they
gnawed and gnawed and gnawed very extra fast at an overhanging tree
until it began to bend and break. Uncle Wiggily gnawed a little, also,
to help the beaver boys.
Then, just as the real boy was almost ready to sink down under water,
the tree fell on the ice, some of its branches close enough so the boy
skater could grasp them.
"Oh, now I can pull myself out!" he said. "This tree fell just in time!
Now I'll be saved!"
He did not know that Uncle Wiggily and the beaver boys had gnawed the
tree down, making it fall just in the right place at the right time.
For the boy was so frightened at having broken through the ice, that he
never noticed the bunny gentleman and the beaver boys on shore.
He caught hold of the tree branches in his cold fingers, pulled himself
up out of the water, that boy did; and to shore. Then as he sat down,
all wet and shivering, to take off his skates, so he could run home,
Uncle Wiggily called to Toodle and Noodle:
"Come on, beaver boys! Our work is done! We have saved that boy, and I
hope he never again tries to skate on thin ice."
Then Uncle Wiggily hopped toward his hollow stump bungalow, and the
beaver boys slid on the ice, near shore, toward their own stick-house,
for the pond was frozen hard and thick enough to hold them. And the boy
ran home as fast as he could, and drank hot lemonade so he wouldn't
catch cold.
He did get the snuffles, but of course that couldn't be helped, and it
wasn't much for falling through the ice; was it?
"You never should have gone skating until the pond was better frozen,"
his mother said.
"I know it," the boy answered. "But wasn't it lucky that tree fell when
it did?"
"Very lucky!" agreed his mother. And neither the boy nor his mother
knew that it was Nurse Jane, Uncle Wiggily and the beaver boys who had
caused the tree to topple over just in time.
But that's the way it sometimes is in this world. And if the cow
doesn't tickle the man in the moon with her horns, when she jumps over
the green cheese, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily going coasting.
STORY XIV
UNCLE WIGGILY GOES COASTING
"Oh, it's stopped snowing! It's stopped snowing! Now we can go
coasting; can't we, Mother?"
"And on our new Christmas sleds! Oh, what fun!"
A boy and a girl ran from the window, against which they had been
pressing their noses, looking out to see when the white flakes would
stop falling from the sky. Now the storm seemed to be over, leaving the
ground covered with the sparkling snow crystals.
"Yes, you may go coasting a little while," said Mother. "But don't stay
too late. When Daddy comes to supper you must be home."
"We will!" promised the boy and girl, and, laughing in glee, they ran
to get on their boots, their mittens and warm coats.
"I want to go coasting! Take me to slide down hill!" cried Bumps, the
little sister of the boy and girl. "I want a sleigh ride."
"Oh, Bumps, you're too little!" objected Sister.
"And she'll fall down and bang herself," added Brother. In fact the
"littlest girl" did fall down so often that she was called "Bumps" as a
pet name.
"I won't fall down!" Bumps promised. "I'll be good! Please take me
coasting?"
"I think you might take her," said Mother.
"Yes, we will," spoke Sister. "Come on, Bumps!"
"Well, if she falls off the sled when it's going down hill, and she
gets bumped, it won't be my fault!" declared Brother.
"I--I'll be good--I won't fall!" promised Bumps. So Mother bundled her
up, and out she went to the coasting hill with Brother and Sister, each
of whom had a sled.
"I'm not going to give her rides on my sled all the while!" said
Brother, half grumbling.
"We'll take turns," more kindly suggested Sister. "Take hold of my
hand, Bumps, and don't fall any more times than you can help, dear!"
"No; I won't," answered Bumps. The littlest girl was smiling and happy
because she was going coasting with Sister and Brother. And she made up
her mind she would try very, very hard not to fall.
On the other side of the forest, near which was the coasting hill of
the children, lived Uncle Wiggily in his hollow stump bungalow. From
afar he had often watched the boys and girls sliding down on their
sleds, but the bunny gentleman had never gone very close.
"For," he said to himself, "they might, by accident, run over me. And,
though I haven't much of a tail to be cut off, I would look queer
if anything should happen to my long ears. I'll keep away from the
coasting hill of the boys and girls."
But not far from the bunny's bungalow was another and smaller hill,
down which the animal boys and girls coasted. Of course, very few of
them had such sleds as you children have, with shiny steel runners, and
with the tops painted red, blue, green and gold. In fact, some of the
animal boys didn't bother with a sled at all.
Take Toodle and Noodle Flat-Tail, the beaver chaps, for instance. They
just slid down hill on their broad, flat tails. And as for Johnnie and
Billie Bushytail, the squirrels, they sat on their fuzzy tails and
scooted down the hill of snow. Others of the animal children sometimes
used pieces of wood, an old board or some sticks bound together with
strands from a wild grape vine.
And about the time that Sister, Brother and Bumps went coasting, Sammie
and Susie Littletail, the rabbits, passed the hollow stump bungalow of
Uncle Wiggily Longears. The little bunnies were each pulling a sled
made from pieces of birch bark they had gnawed from trees.
"Let's ask Uncle Wiggily to go coasting with us," spoke Susie.
"Oh, yes! Let's!" echoed Sammie. "It'll be lots of fun!"
And Uncle Wiggily was very glad to go coasting. Out of his bungalow he
hopped, his pink nose twinkling twice as fast as the shiny star on top
of the Christmas tree.
"Dear me, Wiggy!" cried Nurse Jane. "You don't mean to say you're going
coasting with your rheumatism!"
"No, I'm going coasting with Sammie and Susie," the laughing bunny
answered. "I haven't any rheumatism to go coasting with to-day, I'm
glad to tell you." And, surely enough, he didn't need to take his red,
white and blue striped crutch.
When Sammie, Susie and Uncle Wiggily reached the coasting hill, they
found there many of the animal children.
"Oh, Uncle Wiggily! Ride on my sled!" invited one after another. "Ride
on mine! Coast with me!"
"I'll take turns with each one!" promised the bunny gentleman, and so
he did, riding with Sammie and Susie first, then with the Bushytail
squirrel brothers, next with Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble, the
ducks, and so on down to Dottie and Willie Flufftail, the lamb children.
Oh, such fun as Uncle Wiggily had on the animal children's coasting
hill. And on the other side of the forest, Sister, Brother and Bumps
had their fun, with the real boys and girls.
At last it began to grow dusk, and when Uncle Wiggily was thinking of
telling the animal children it was time for them to leave for home, up
came rushing Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow, the puppy dog boys.
"Oh, Uncle Wiggily!" barked Jackie. "We were just over to the big hill,
where the real boys coast, and we saw----"
"We saw a little baby girl--that is, almost a baby--in a pile of snow!"
finished Peetie, for his brother Jackie was out of breath and couldn't
bark any more.
"What's that?" cried Uncle Wiggily. "A real, live little girl in the
snow?"
"Right in a snow drift!" barked Jackie. "All alone!"
"Why," said the bunny gentleman, as he thought it over, "she must have
been coasting with her brother or sister, and maybe she fell off a sled
and went down deep in the snow. And they played so hard they never
missed her! But she mustn't be allowed to stay asleep in the snow.
She'll freeze!"
"If she's only a little one--almost a baby--couldn't we put her on one
of our sleds?" asked Sammie.
"And ride her home," went on Susie.