UNCLE WIGGILY AND POLLY FLINDERS
"There!" cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper,
who took care of the hollow-stump bungalow for Uncle Wiggily
Longears, the rabbit gentleman. "There, it is all finished at last!"
"What's all finished?" asked the bunny uncle, who was reading the
paper in his easy chair near the fire, for the weather was still
cold. "I hope you don't mean you have finished living with me, Nurse
Jane? For I would be very lonesome if you were to go away."
"Oh, don't worry, I'll not leave you, Wiggy," she said. "What I
meant was that I had finished making the new dress for Susie
Littletail, the rabbit girl."
"Good!" cried the bunny uncle. "A new dress for my little niece
Susie. That's fine! If you like, Nurse Jane, I'll take it to her."
"I wish you would," spoke the muskrat lady. "I have not time myself.
Just be careful of it. Don't let the bad fox or the skillery-scalery
alligator with humps on his ears bite holes in it."
"I won't," promised Uncle Wiggily. So taking the dress, which Nurse
Jane had sewed for Susie, over his paw, and with his tall silk hat
over his ears, and carrying his red, white and blue striped
barber-pole rheumatism crutch, off Uncle Wiggily started for the
Littletail home.
"Susie will surely like her dress," thought the rabbit gentleman.
"It has such pretty colors." For it had, being pink and blue and red
and yellow and purple and lavender and strawberry and lemon and
Orange Mountain colors. There may have been other colors in it, but
I can think of no more right away.
Uncle Wiggily was going along past Old Mother Hubbard's house, and
past the place where Mother Goose lived, when, coming to a place
near a big tree, Uncle Wiggily saw another house. And from inside
the house came a crying sound.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What shall I do?" sobbed a voice.
"Ah, ha! More trouble!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "I seem to be finding
lots of people in trouble lately. Well, now to see who this is!"
Going up to the house, and peering in a window, Uncle Wiggily saw a
little girl sitting before a fireplace. And this little girl was
crying.
"Hello!" called Uncle Wiggily, in his jolly voice, as he opened the
window. "What is the matter? Are you Little Bo Peep, and are you
crying because you have lost your sheep?"
"No, Uncle Wiggily," answered the little girl. "I am crying because
I have spoiled my nice new dress, and when my mother comes home and
finds it out she will whip me."
"Oh, no!" cried the bunny uncle. "Your mother will never do that.
But who are you?"
"Why, don't you know? I am little Polly Flinders, I sat among the
cinders, warming my pretty little toes. 'And her mother came and
caught her, and she whipped her little daughter, for spoiling her
nice new clothes.'
"That's what it says in the Mother Goose book," said Polly Flinders,
"and, of course, that's what will happen to me. Oh, dear! I don't
want to be whipped. And I didn't really spoil quite all my nice new
clothes. It's only my dress, and some hot ashes got on that."
"Well, that isn't so bad," said Uncle Wiggily. "It may be that I can
clean it for you." But when he looked at Polly's dress he saw that
it could not be fixed, for, like Pussy Cat Mole's best petticoat,
Polly's dress had been burned through with hot coals, so that it was
full of holes.
"No, that can't be fixed, I'm sorry to say," said Uncle Wiggily.
"Oh, dear!" sobbed Polly Flinders, as she sat among the cinders.
"What shall I do? I don't want to be whipped by my mother."
"And you shall not be," said the bunny uncle. "Not that I think she
would whip you, but we will not give her a chance. See here, I have
a new dress that I was taking to Susie Littletail. Nurse Jane can
easily make my little rabbit niece another.
"So you take this one, and give me your old one. And when your
mother comes she will not see the holes in your dress. Only you must
tell her what happened, or it would not be fair. Always tell mothers
and fathers everything that happens to you."
"I will," promised Polly Flinders.
She soon took off her old dress and put on the new one intended for
Susie, and it just fitted her.
"Oh, how lovely!" cried Polly Flinders, looking at her toes.
"And now," said Uncle Wiggily, "you must sit no more among the
cinders."
"I'll not," Polly promised, and she went and sat down in front of
the looking-glass, where she could look proudly at the new
dress--not too proudly, you understand, but just proud enough.
Polly thanked Uncle Wiggily, who took the old soiled and burned
dress to Susie's house. When the rabbit girl saw the bunny uncle
coming she ran to meet him, crying:
"Oh! did Nurse Jane send you with my new dress?"
"She did," answered Uncle Wiggily, "but see what happened to it on
the way," and he showed Susie the burned holes and all.
"Oh, dear!" cried the little rabbit girl, sadly. "Oh, dear!"
"Never mind," spoke Uncle Wiggily, kindly, and he told all that had
happened. It was a sort of adventure, you see.
"Oh, I'm glad you gave Polly my dress!" said Susie, clapping her
paws.
"Nurse Jane shall make you another dress," promised Uncle Wiggily,
and the muskrat lady did. And when the mother of Polly Flinders came
home she thought the new dress was just fine, and she did not whip
her little daughter. In fact, she said she would not have done so
anyhow. So that part of the Mother Goose book is wrong.
And thus everything came out all right, and if the shaving brush
doesn't whitewash the blackboard, so the chalk can't dance on it
with the pencil sharpener, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily
and the garden maid.