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
today 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 shepardess
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.