UNCLE WIGGILY AND MR. POP-GOES
"Uncle Wiggily," said Mrs. Littletail, the rabbit lady, one morning,
as she came in the dining-room where Mr. Longears was reading the
cabbage leaf paper after breakfast, "Uncle Wiggily, I don't like you
to go out in such a storm as this, but I do need some things from
the store, and I have no one to send."
"Why, I'll be only too glad to go," cried the bunny uncle, who was
spending a few days visiting the Littletail family in their
underground burrow-house. "It isn't snowing very hard," and he
looked out through the window, which was up a little way above
ground to make the burrow light. "What do you want, Mrs.
Littletail?" he asked.
"Oh, I want a loaf of bread and some sugar," said the bunny mother
of Sammie and Susie Littletail.
"And you shall certainly have what you want!" cried Uncle Wiggily,
as he got ready to go to the store. Soon he was on his way, wearing
his fur coat, and hopping along on his corn-stalk rheumatism crutch,
while his pink nose was twinkling in the frosty air like a red
lantern on the back of an automobile.
"A loaf of home-made bread and three and a half pounds of granulated
sugar," said Uncle Wiggily to the monkey-doodle gentleman who kept
the grocery store. "And the best that you have, if you please, as
it's for Mrs. Littletail."
"You shall certainly have the best!" cried the monkey-doodle
gentleman, with a jolly laugh. And while he was wrapping up the
things for Uncle Wiggily to carry home, all at once there sounded in
the store a loud:
"Pop!"
"My! What's that?" asked Uncle Wiggily, surprised like and excited.
"I heard a bang like a gun. Are there any hunter-men, with their
dogs about? If there are I must be careful."
"No, that wasn't a gun," said the monkey-doodle gentleman. "That was
only one of the toy balloons in my window. I had some left over from
last year, so I blew them up and put them in my window to make it
look pretty. Now and then one of them bursts." And just then, surely
enough, "Pop! Bang!" went another toy balloon, bursting and
shriveling all up.
Uncle Wiggily looked in the front window of the store and saw some
blown-up balloons that had not burst.
"I'll take two of those," he said to the monkey-doodle gentleman.
"Sammie and Susie Littletail will like to play with them."
"Better take two or three," said the monkey-doodle gentleman. "I'll
let you have them cheap, as they are old balloons, and they will
burst easily."
So he let the air out of four balloons and gave them to Uncle
Wiggily to take home to the bunny children.
The rabbit gentleman started off through the snow-storm toward the
underground house, but he had not gone very far before, just as he
was coming out from behind a big stump, he heard voices talking.
"Now, I'll tell you how we can get those rabbits," Uncle Wiggily
heard one voice say. "I'll crawl down in the burrow, and as soon as
they see me they'll be scared and run out--Uncle Wiggily, Mrs.
Littletail, the two children, Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy and all. Then
you can grab them, Mr. Bigtail! I am glad I happened to meet you!"
"Ah, ha!" thought Uncle Wiggily. "Mr. Bigtail! I ought to know that
name. It's the fox, and he and some one else seem to be after us
rabbits. But I thought the fox promised to be good and let me alone.
He must have changed his mind."
Uncle Wiggily peeked cautiously around the stump, taking care to
make no noise, and there he saw a fox and another animal talking.
And the rabbit gentleman saw that it was not the fox who had
promised to be good, but another one, of the same name, who was bad.
"Yes, I'll go down the hole and drive out the rabbits and you can
grab them," said the queer animal.
"That's good," growled the fox, "but to whom have I the honor of
speaking?" That was his way of asking the name of the other animal,
you see.
"Oh, I'm called Mr. Pop-Goes," said the other.
"Mr. Pop-Goes! What a queer name," said the fox, and all the while
Uncle Wiggily was listening with his big ears, and wondering what it
all meant.
"Oh, Pop-Goes isn't all my name," said the queer animal. "Don't you
know the story in the book? The monkey chased the cobbler's wife all
around the steeple. That's the way the money goes, Pop! goes the
weasel. I'm Mr. Pop-Goes, the weasel, you see. I'm 'specially good
at chasing rabbits."
"Oh, I see!" barked Mr. Bigtail, the fox. "Well, I'll be glad if you
can help me get those rabbits. I've been over to that Uncle
Wiggily's hollow-stump bungalow, but he isn't around."
"No, he's visiting the Littletail rabbits," said Mr. Pop-Goes, the
weasel. "But we'll drive him out."
Then Uncle Wiggily felt very badly, indeed, for he knew that a
weasel is the worst animal a rabbit can have after him. Weasels are
very fond of rabbits. They love them so much they want to eat them,
and Uncle Wiggily did not want to be eaten, even by Mr. Pop-Goes.
"Oh, dear!" he thought. "What can I do to scare away the bad fox and
Mr. Pop-Goes, the weasel? Oh, dear!" Then he thought of the toy
balloons, that made a noise like a gun when they were blown up and
burst. "The very thing!" thought the rabbit gentleman.
Carefully, as he hid behind the stump, Uncle Wiggily took out one of
the toy balloons. Carefully he blew it up, bigger and bigger and
bigger, until, all at once:
"Bang!" exploded the toy balloon, even making Uncle Wiggily jump.
And as for the fox and Mr. Pop-Goes, the weasel, why they were so
kerslostrated (if you will kindly excuse me for using such a word)
that they turned a somersault, jumped up in the air, came down,
turned a peppersault, and started to run.
"Did you hear that noise?" asked the weasel. "That was a pop, and
whenever I hear a pop I have to go! And I'm going fast!"
"So am I!" barked the fox. "That was a hunter with a gun after us, I
guess. We'll get those rabbits some other time."
"Maybe you will, and maybe not!" laughed Uncle Wiggily, as he
hurried on to the burrow with the bread, sugar and the rest of the
toy balloons, with which Sammie and Susie had lots of fun.
So you see Mr. Pop-Goes, the weasel, didn't get Uncle Wiggily after
all, and if the pepper caster doesn't throw dust in the potato's
eyes, and make it sneeze at the rag doll, I'll tell you next about
Uncle Wiggily and Simple Simon.