UNCLE WIGGILY AND DING-DONG 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:
“Ding-dong bell, Pussy’s in the well.
Who put her in? Little Johnnie Green.
Who pulled her out? Big Johnnie Stout.
“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.
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