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:
“Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub;
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,
And the baker has taken the hot baked potato.”
“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.
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