you the story of Uncle Wiggily and the birthday cake--that is, I will
if the snow-shovel doesn't make the coal-scuttle sneeze when they are
playing tag down under the cellar steps.
STORY XXVI
UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE BIRTHDAY CAKE
"To-morrow is my birthday! To-morrow is my birthday! And I'm going to
have a cake with ten candles on!"
A little girl sang this over and over as she danced around the house
one morning.
"Ten candles! And they'll be lighted, and I can blow them out and cut
the cake and pass it around; can't I, Mother?" asked the little girl.
"Yes, my dear," Mother answered. "But if you are going to have a
birthday cake you must go to the store and get me some flour, sugar
and eggs. I did not know I needed them, but I do, if you are to have a
cake."
"Oh, of course I want a cake!" said the little girl. "It wouldn't be
at all like a birthday without a cake! And ten candles on top, all
lighted! Last year I only had nine candles. But now I can have ten! Ten
candles! Ten candles on my birthday cake!" sang the happy little girl
again and again. "Ten candles! Ten candles!"
"You had better go to the store, instead of singing so much!" laughed
her mother. "Sing on your way, if you like. But don't forget the flour,
sugar and eggs."
"I'll get them," said the little girl, and off she started, taking a
short cut through the woods to reach the store more quickly.
These woods were the same ones in which Uncle Wiggily had built his
hollow stump bungalow, and about the same time the little girl started
off to get the things for her birthday cake the bunny rabbit gentleman
stood on his front porch.
"Where are you going?" asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, his muskrat lady
housekeeper.
"Oh, just to hop through the forest, to look for an adventure,"
answered Mr. Longears. "I haven't had one since I helped dig the
rain-trench about the tent of the camping boys."
"I should think that would be enough to last a long time," spoke Miss
Fuzzy Wuzzy.
"Oh, no. I need a new adventure every day!" laughed the bunny, and over
the fields and through the woods he hopped.
Now Uncle Wiggily had not gone very far before, all of a sudden, he
stepped into a trap. It was a spring trap, set in the woods by some
hunter who had covered it with dried leaves so it could not easily be
seen. That's the way hunters fool the wild animals.
And, not seeing the trap, Uncle Wiggily hopped right into it.
"Snap!" went the jaws of the trap together, catching the poor bunny
gentleman fast by one hind leg.
"Oh, my!" cried Mr. Longears. "I'm caught! But it is fortunate that it
is a smooth-jawed trap, and not the kind with sharp teeth. If I could
only get my leg loose I'd be all right; except that my paw might be
lame and stiff for a few days. I must try to get out!"
Uncle Wiggily tried to pull his paw from the trap, but it was of no
use. The spring held the jaws too tightly together. The bunny gentleman
twinkled his pink nose as hard as he could, and he even tried to pry
apart the trap jaws with his red, white and blue striped rheumatism
crutch. But he couldn't.
"Oh, dear!" though Uncle Wiggily. "I must call for help. Perhaps Neddie
Stubtail, the strong boy bear, will hear me. He could easily spring
open this trap and set me free."
So the bunny gentleman called as loudly as he could:
"Help! Help!"
Of course he talked animal talk, and for this reason the little girl,
who was going to have a birthday cake, with ten candles on it, did
not know what Uncle Wiggily was saying. She heard him making a noise,
though, for she passed the place where the bunny was caught in the
trap, soon after the accident happened.
"I wonder what that funny noise is?" said the little girl, as Uncle
Wiggily again called for help. "It sounds like some animal. I wish I
understood animal talk!"
Uncle Wiggily wished, with all his heart, that the little girl could
hear what he was saying, for he was calling for help. The bunny
understood girl-talk, and he knew what this girl was saying, for she
spoke her thoughts out loud.
"But she doesn't know what I want!" said poor Uncle Wiggily to himself.
"She is sure to be good and kind, as all girls are, and if I could only
get her to come over this way she might take me out of the trap."
The little girl, on her way home from the store, had come to a stop not
far from Uncle Wiggily, but she could not see him because he was behind
a bush.
"I must make some kind of a noise that she will hear," thought the
bunny. Then he thrashed around in the bushes with his crutch, rattling
the dried leaves and the green bushes, and the little girl heard this
noise.
"Oh, maybe a bird is caught in a big cobweb!" said the little girl.
"I'll get it loose--I love the birds!"
Putting down her bundle of flour, sugar and eggs on a flat stump, she
made her way through the bushes until she saw where Uncle Wiggily was
caught in the trap.
[Illustration: "I wish you would come to my birthday party!"]
"Oh, what a funny rabbit!" cried the little girl as she looked at the
bunny gentleman all dressed, as he always was when he went to look
for an adventure. "He looks just like a picture on an Easter card!"
laughed the little girl. "I wish I had him at my party!"
"Well, I wish she'd take this trap off my paw!" thought Uncle Wiggily,
though of course he could say nothing, however much he could hear.
Then the little girl looked down among the leaves and saw where the
trap pinched Uncle Wiggily.
"Oh, you poor bunny rabbit!" she cried. "I'll set you loose."
Very gently she pressed her foot on the spring of the trap, to open it.
And when the jaws were opened Uncle Wiggily could lift out his paw,
which he did. He hopped a little way over the dried leaves, limping a
bit, for the pinching trap had pained him. Then, coming to a stop on
a smooth, grassy place, the bunny leaned on his red, white and blue
striped rheumatism crutch and, taking off his tall silk hat, he made a
low and polite bow to the little girl.
"Thank you for having done me a great favor!" said Uncle Wiggily in
animal talk. "I wish I could do one for you!"
But of course the little girl could not understand this bunny language,
so she only laughed and said:
"Oh, what a dear, funny bunny! With a tall hat and everything! I wish
you would come to my birthday party! I'm going to have a cake with ten
lighted candles on!"
"Thank you, I'd like to come, but it is out of the question," answered
Uncle Wiggily in his own talk. Then, with another low and polite bow,
he hopped away.
The little girl picked up the things she had bought at the store and
went home.
"You'll never guess what I saw in the woods," she told her mother. "A
bunny rabbit, all dressed in a black coat and red trousers, was caught
in a trap, and I set him free!"
"Nonsense!" laughed Mother. "Whoever heard of a rabbit like that? You
are so excited about your birthday cake that you were dreaming, I
think!"
"Oh, no, Mother! I didn't dream!" said the little girl. "Really I
didn't!"
"Well, never mind. Now we'll make your birthday cake," answered Mother.
The birthday cake was mixed and baked in the oven, and on top was
spread pink frosting.
"We'll put the candles on to-morrow, when you have your party," Mother
told the little girl.
To-morrow came, after a night in which Cora Janet, which was the little
girl's name, had dreamed about riding in an airship, with a bunny
gentleman dressed up like a soldier. In the afternoon many boys and
girls came to Cora Janet's birthday party.
"Oh, how lovely everything is!" exclaimed a little boy, when he was
given his second dish of ice cream.
"Wait until you see my birthday cake with ten candles on!" whispered
Cora Janet.
When it was almost time to bring on the lighted cake, Mother called
Cora Janet out into the kitchen.
"Did you get the candles, Cora?" Mother asked.
"Why, no!" the little girl answered. "I--I thought we had candles!"
"And I thought I told you to get them," Mother went on. "There isn't
one in the house! I've looked everywhere. Never mind, perhaps I can
borrow some next door. Go back to your friends."
"Oh, I do hope you can get candles!" sighed Cora Janet. "A birthday
cake without candles will hardly be right!"
Mother asked the lady who lived next door, on one side, if she had any
candles.
"Not a one, I'm sorry to say," was the answer.
Then Mother asked the lady on the other side.
"Oh, I never use candles," this lady replied, coming out on her back
stoop to talk over the fence to Cora Janet's mother. "I'm so sorry!"
"Well, I guess they'll have to eat the cake without any birthday
candles on," said Mother. "Cora Janet will be so disappointed, too,
as she is such an imaginative child! Just fancy, Mrs. Blake, she came
home yesterday, and told about helping out of a trap an old rabbit
gentleman, with a tall silk hat!"
"The idea! She must have dreamed it!" said Mrs. Blake.
"No, she didn't dream it! That really happened!" said Uncle Wiggily to
himself, who was just then hopping through the fields back of the house
where Cora Janet lived. "So this is her home, is it?" went on the bunny
gentleman to himself. "And she hasn't any candles for her birthday
cake! Too bad!"
Uncle Wiggily had hopped along just in time to hear Cora Janet's mother
asking for candles of the neighbors.
"It's so late that all the stores are closed," went on Mrs. Blake, "or
I'd go get some candles for Cora."
"Never mind," spoke Mother. "She will have to bear her disappointment
as best she can."
"No! That must not be!" said Uncle Wiggily to himself. "I cannot give
her real candles, but I can leave on her steps some slivers of the
pine tree. They have in them pitch, tar and resin and will burn almost
like candles. When I was a rabbit boy I often lighted these pine-tree
candles."
Not far away were the woods, and, hopping across the field in the dusk
of the evening, Uncle Wiggily, with his sharp teeth, soon gnawed off
some pine-knot splinters from one of the trees. In olden times, when
there were no electric or kerosene lamps, children used to study their
lessons in front of the fireplaces, by these pine knots.
"These will do for birthday-cake candles," whispered Uncle Wiggily, as
he hopped back to Cora Janet's house with a paw full of the pine knots.
He put them on the stoop, and then, with his hind paws, he kicked some
gravel from the front walk up against the dining-room windows.
"What's that?" asked Cora Janet, as she heard the noise.
"Some bad boys playing tick-tack," said one of the girls at the party.
"They're playing tricks because they weren't asked."
"I'll see who it is," spoke Mother.
She went out on the porch. There she saw the pile of pine-knot slivers.
Having lived in the country when she was a girl, Mother knew that these
bits of wood could be used for candles.
"Oh, now I can make the birthday cake blaze most brightly!" exclaimed
Mother. Into the house she hurried. She stuck ten pine-knot slivers on
the cake, for Uncle Wiggily had left a full dozen, not knowing exactly
how old Cora Janet was. Then, when the pine knots were lighted, Mother
carried the cake into the room where the boys and girls were wishing
Cora Janet many happy returns for her birthday.
"Oh, where did you get the candles?" asked Cora.
"I guess the rabbit you dreamed you saw must have left them," answered
Mother, in fun, of course, for she never thought that really could
happen.
"Dream-candles or not, they are lovely!" murmured the little girl.
And everyone at the party said the same thing.
They watched Cora Janet as, one by one, she blew out the pine candles
on her birthday cake. And when the last one flickered away, the cake
was cut amid the joyous laughter of the boys and girls.
"Well, I'm glad I could do her a favor," said the bunny rabbit to
himself, as hidden under the lilac bush, he heard and saw all that went
on. "I shall always love Cora Janet!"
And he did.
So if the needle doesn't wink its eye when it sits on the
sewing-machine to read the paper of pins, I'll tell you next about
Uncle Wiggily and the New Year's horn.
STORY XXVII
UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE NEW YEAR'S HORN
Christmas had come and gone, and the next holiday for the boys and
girls who lived in the village outside of Uncle Wiggily's forest was
to be New Year's Day. I call it Uncle Wiggily's forest for on one edge
of it the bunny rabbit gentleman had built himself a hollow stump
bungalow. There he lived with Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, his muskrat lady
housekeeper.
On the farther side of the wood was the village where many real boys
and girls had their homes. To them, as I say, Christmas had come and
gone, bringing to most of them presents which they liked very much.
"I'm going to have a lot of fun on New Year's," said one boy to another
as they were coasting on the hill the last day of the old year.
"What are you going to do?" asked the other boy.
"I'm going to blow the Old Year out and the New Year in," was the
answer.
"Gracious me sakes alive!" thought Uncle Wiggily Longears, the bunny
rabbit gentleman, who happened to be resting under a bush near where
the boys were coasting down hill. "I hope he doesn't blow the Old Year
so far away that the New Year will be afraid to come in," said Mr.
Longears to himself. Then he listened again, for the boys were talking
further.
"How you going to blow?" one lad wanted to know.
"With my Christmas horn," was the answer. "I got a dandy horn for
Christmas. To-night is New Year's eve. My father said I could stay up
late. At twelve o'clock the Old Year goes away and the New Year comes,
and we're going to have a party at our house, and I'm going to blow my
horn like anything!"
"So'm I," said several other boys.
"Where does the Old Year go when you blow it away?" asked a lad who had
red hair and freckles.
"Oh, I don't know," answered the boy who had first talked of his
Christmas horn. "It just goes--that's all! It disappears same as the
hole in a doughnut when you eat it."
"You don't eat the _hole_!" declared another boy.
"Well, you eat all around it," was the answer, "and then there isn't
any hole any more. It's the same with the Old Year. After twelve
o'clock on December 31 there isn't any Old Year any more. It's January
the first, and it's the New Year. I'm going to blow my horn loud! All
the fellows are!"
"We will, too!" cried the rest of the boys.
But one lad, who had a clumsy, home-made sled on the hill, did not say
he was going to blow the New Year in. He turned away as the other lads
talked of their coming fun. Someone asked him:
"Are you going to watch the Old Year out, Jimmy?"
"No, I guess not," was the answer. "I'm going to sleep."
"The noise will wake you up," someone suggested.
"Well, then I'll go to sleep again," was the answer.
"I guess the reason Jimmy won't blow the Old Year out and the New Year
in is because he hasn't any horn," said a boy with a fine new blue
sled. "He didn't get hardly anything for Christmas."
"That's too bad!" softly spoke the lad who had first mentioned about
blowing in the New Year. "Maybe I can find an old horn at my house,
and I'll take it to him. If I could find two I'd take another to his
sister. But I don't believe I can."
"Oh, won't we have fun, blowing the New Year in?" cried the boys, as
they walked to the top of the hill so they might coast down. But Jimmy
did not join in the joyous shout. He was a poor boy, and, as the others
had said, he had not found much in his stocking at Christmas. Certainly
there was no bright tooting horn!
"This is too bad!" thought Uncle Wiggily, as he hopped back to his
hollow stump bungalow, after the coasting boys were out of the way so
they would not see him. "I wonder how I could get a New Year's horn for
that poor boy?"
The bunny gentleman was wondering about this, but he could not seem to
think of any plan, when, as he was about to hop up his bungalow steps,
he saw Billie Wagtail, the goat boy.
"Oh, Uncle Wiggily!" bleated Billie. "See my new horns!"
"Your new horns!" exclaimed Mr. Longears, turning toward the goat chap.
"Are you going to blow the New Year in, also?"
"Yes, but not with these horns," went on Billie. "I mean, see the new
horns on my head. I was ill, you know, and my old horns dropped off,
and now I have these new ones," and he shook his head, on which were
two long, curving sharp horns. "I'm going to blow the New Year in,"
bleated the boy goat, "but not on my head horns; on my Christmas tin
horn."
"That's more than one boy whom I know about is going to do," said
Uncle Wiggily a little sadly. Then the bunny gentleman had a sudden
thought. "Do you s'pose, Billie," he asked the goat boy, "that your old
horns could be made into blowing ones for New Year's?"
"Why, yes, I guess so," Billie answered. "But you'd have to saw off one
end to make a place to blow in. My horns are partly hollow and if you
blew in the little end, after making a hole there, the noise would come
out the other end."
[Illustration: "Oh, Uncle Wiggily!" bleated Billie. "See my new horns!"]
"Then I know what I can do!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. "Get me your old
horns, Billie boy, and I'll fix them up for New Year's blowing. I know
how to do it!"
The Wagtail goat chap gave the bunny gentleman the old horns. Uncle
Wiggily took them into his bungalow, and he and Nurse Jane washed them
clean and polished them. Then, with her sharp teeth, the muskrat lady
gnawed a little off the small end of each horn, so they could be blown
through.
Uncle Wiggily made two wooden whistles and fastened one in the small
end of each horn.
"Now I'll try it, Janie," he said to Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy.
Uncle Wiggily blew into the small end of one horn. Out of the other end
came a sweet tooting sound.
"Hurray!" cried the bunny gentleman. "These will be just right for New
Year's! I'll take one to the poor boy and one to his sister. Then they
can celebrate with their friends who have regular tin horns."
"It is very kind of you to be so thoughtful," said Nurse Jane.
"And it was kind of you to help me make the New Year's horns from
Billie's old ones," spoke Uncle Wiggily, as he skipped along, for it
was getting dark and soon the Old Year would go away--like the hole in
the doughnut--and the New Year would come, to bring with it Fourth of
July, birthdays and Christmas.
Up the steps of the house of the poor boy and girl who had no New
Year's horns to blow hopped Uncle Wiggily. No one saw him in the dusk.
He placed the horns on the doormat, tapped three times with his red,
white and blue striped rheumatism crutch on the porch, and then hopped
away.
"What was that?" asked the girl of the boy.
"I'll go see," he answered.
The boy opened the door and saw, in the light of the moon, which just
then came from behind a cloud, the two goat horns made into New Year's
"tooters."
"Oh, hurray!" shouted the boy, as he blew on one of the horns. "Now we
can send the Old Year on its way and tell the New Year how glad we are
to see him. Hurray!"
"And I can blow, too!" laughed the girl. "Hurray!"
Her brother gave her the other horn, and when twelve o'clock midnight
came, the children blew on the tooters as loudly as they could. So did
all the other boys and girls in the village; and the animal boys and
girls in their nest-houses and burrows also blew on horns and wooden
whistles to welcome the New Year.
All over the land the bells rang and horns were blown. Uncle Wiggily
heard them in his hollow stump bungalow, and so did Nurse Jane.
"Happy New Year!" wished the muskrat lady.
"Happy New Year!" echoed the bunny gentleman.
The boy and girl, blowing Billie Wagtail's old horns, danced around
their father and mother, wishing them a Happy New Year also.
"Where did you get the horns?" asked Mother.
"Oh, I guess Santa Claus dropped them, on his way back to the North
Pole," answered the boy.
But we know better than that; don't we?
So, after all, everything came out right, and the boy and girl were
very happy with their queer New Year's horns.
But if the Jumping Jack doesn't tickle the lollypop with the sharp end
of the ice-cream cone, and make it fall off the stick, I'll tell you
next about Uncle Wiggily's Thanksgiving.
STORY XXVIII
UNCLE WIGGILY'S THANKSGIVING
There came, one afternoon, a knock at the door of the hollow stump
bungalow where Uncle Wiggily Longears lived.
"Do you s'pose that can be the Fuzzy Fox or the Woozie Wolf?" anxiously
asked Nurse Jane, the muskrat lady housekeeper.
"No," answered the bunny gentleman. "They would not dare come boldly up
to my bungalow, in broad daylight, though if it were night they might
come sneaking along, trying to nibble my ears. I suppose this may be
Sammie or Susie Littletail, or Johnnie or Billie Bushytail. I'll let
them in."
But when Uncle Wiggily opened the door, in came rushing a great big
turkey gobbler gentleman. In his bill he carried a basket in which set
a dish filled with something red.
"I have it, Uncle Wiggily! I have it!" exclaimed the turkey. "I picked
it up and ran away with it! Now they can't have any Thanksgiving and
I'll be safe! Shut the door!" he gobbled, and setting the basket on the
floor he scuttled behind a chair, while Nurse Jane and Uncle Wiggily
were so surprised they hardly knew what to do.
"_What_ in the world have you brought with you, Mr. Gobble Obble?"
asked the bunny gentleman. Gobble Obble was the turkey's name.
"The _cranberry sauce_," was the answer. "At our house, where I have
been living, they are making a great fuss over Thanksgiving, which will
happen in a few days. They have been feeding me up to fatten me, and
every day the Man would come out and look at me; though I didn't know
what for until I heard the children talking about it."
"Talking about what?" Nurse Jane wanted to know.
"_Thanksgiving_," gobbled the turkey. "This morning I heard the cook
say: 'That gobbler is fat enough to roast, now. I think I'll make the
cranberry sauce. It will be Thanksgiving soon!'"
"Then," went on the turkey, "I knew why they had been feeding me things
to make me fat! You can't imagine how I felt! Well, the cook made the
cranberry sauce. She put it in a dish and set it out on the back steps
to cool. I watched my chance, picked it up and ran over here. There's
the cranberry sauce!" and Mr. Gobble Obble pointed to it with one wing.
"But why in the world did you bring away the cranberry sauce? What good
is that going to do you?" asked Uncle Wiggily, very much puzzled by the
turkey's queer talk and actions.
"Listen," gobbled the turkey. "I heard one of the children say that
Thanksgiving wouldn't be Thanksgiving without _turkey and cranberry
sauce_! Then, thinks I to myself, if I run away, and take the cranberry
sauce with me, there will be no Thanksgiving, and many poor turkeys
will be glad of it."
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" laughed Uncle Wiggily, chuckling so hard that his pink
nose twinkled like a lightning bug on Fourth of July.
"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Gobble Obble. "Won't you be good enough
to hide me and the cranberry sauce until after Thanksgiving? Then I'll
be safe."
"Of course you may stay here," said the bunny gentleman. "But the
idea of thinking you can stop Thanksgiving by hiding yourself, or the
cranberry sauce!"
"Can't I?" asked Mr. Gobble Obble, doubtful-like.
"Of course you can't!" exclaimed Mr. Longears. "Why, Thanksgiving
doesn't mean just feasting on turkey, ice cream and cranberries!"
"It does at the house I ran away from," said Mr. Gobble Obble.
"Yes, and I suppose it does at many other houses," went on the bunny
gentleman. "But Thanksgiving is really a time in which to be thankful
for the things one has had to eat all the year--for that, and other
blessings. The Pilgrim Fathers, who came over to live among the
Indians, were thankful for even a little parched corn."
"What are Indians?" asked the turkey, who had never studied history.
"Wild men, who wore feathers such as yours," said Nurse Jane. "They are
Indians."
"I'll tell you about the Indians some day," promised Uncle Wiggily.
"Now we must talk more about Thanksgiving."
"I don't like to talk about it," sighed Mr. Gobble Obble. "It isn't a
happy thing for me even to think about, much less talk about!"
"But you shouldn't have run away with the cranberry sauce," went on the
bunny gentleman. "I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to take it back."
"All right--I will," promised Mr. Gobble Obble. "But I'll go after
dark, so the cook won't see me. Then I'll come here again and stay with
you and Nurse Jane."
"Yes, do," invited the bunny. "Spend Thanksgiving with us."
So when it grew dark Mr. Gobble Obble picked up the basket of cranberry
sauce in his bill, and went over the fields and through the woods to
the village, where lived the real boys and girls and their fathers
and mothers. Softly and silently, like the shadow of a feathered
Indian, the turkey made his way to the back stoop. There he set down
the cranberry sauce and scuttled over to Uncle Wiggily's hollow stump
bungalow again.