UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE UNICORN
"Well, you look just as if you were going somewhere, Uncle Wiggily,"
said Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as the rabbit
gentleman whizzed around the corner of his hollow stump bungalow in his
automobile, with the bologna sausage tires, one morning.
"I am going somewhere," he answered, and really he was, for the wheels
were whizzing around like anything.
"And going where, may I ask?" politely inquired the muskrat lady.
"I am going to give Alice a ride," answered Uncle Wiggily. "Alice from
Wonderland, I mean. She never has ridden in an automobile."
"She never has?" cried Nurse Jane, in surprise.
"Never! You see, when she was put in that nice book, which tells so much
about her, there weren't any autos, and, of course, she never could
have had a ride in one.
"But she had ever so many other nice adventures, such as going down the
rabbit hole and through the looking glass. However, I promised her a
ride in my auto, and here I go to give it to her," and with that Uncle
Wiggily sprinkled some pepper and salt on the sausage tires of his
auto's wheels to make them go faster.
The rabbit gentleman found Alice, the little book girl, in the White
Queen's garden having a make-believe tea party with the Mock Turtle, who
soon would have to go into the 5 o'clock soup.
"Oh, how kind of you to come for me, Uncle Wiggily!" cried Alice, and
she jumped up so quickly that she overturned the multiplication table,
at which she and the Mock Turtle had been sitting, and ran to jump in
the auto.
"Well, I don't call that very nice," said the Mock Turtle. "Here she's
gone and mixed up the seven times table with the three times six, and
goodness knows when I'll ever get them straightened out again."
"I'm sorry!" called Alice, waving her hand as she rode off with Uncle
Wiggily. "I'll help you when I come back."
"And I'll help too," promised the bunny uncle.
Mr. Longears and Wonderland Alice rode over the fields and through the
woods, and they were having a fine time when, all of a sudden, as the
automobile came near a place where some oak trees grew in a thick
cluster Alice cried:
"Hark! They're fighting!"
"Who?" asked Uncle Wiggily. "Please don't tell me it is the mosquito
enemy coming after me to bite me."
"No, it's the Lion and the Unicorn," Alice answered. "Don't you remember
how it goes in my book:
"'The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the Crown,
The Lion beat the Unicorn all around the town.
Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown,
And then the funny Unicorn jumped right up and down.'
"That last line isn't just right," explained Alice to the bunny uncle,
"but I couldn't properly think of it, I'm so frightened!"
"Frightened? At what?" asked Uncle Wiggily.
"At the Unicorn," answered Alice. "Here he comes," and, as she said
that, Uncle Wiggily saw a funny animal, like a horse, with a big long
horn sticking out of the middle of his head, straight in front of him,
galloping out of the clump of trees.
"Hurray! I beat him!" cried the Unicorn. "Come on now, quick, I must get
away from here before they catch me!"
"You beat him? Do you mean beat the Lion?" asked Uncle Wiggily for he
was not frightened as was Alice.
"Sure I beat him," answered the Unicorn, as he jumped into the back seat
of the automobile. "Drive on!" he ordered just as if the bunny uncle
gentleman were the coachman.
"Did you beat him very hard, with a broomstick?" asked Alice, putting
out her head from behind Uncle Wiggily's tall silk hat where she had
hidden herself.
"Beat him with a broomstick? Ha! Ha! I should say not!" laughed the
Unicorn. "We're too jolly good friends for that," and he spoke like an
English chap. "I beat him playing hop-Scotch and Jack-straws. I was two
hops and three straws ahead of him when I stopped and ran away because
they were after me."
"Who were after you?" asked Alice. "The lion's friends?"
"No, the straws that show which way the wind blows. When the wind blows
the straws against me they tickle, and I can't bear to be tickled. I'm
worse than a soap bubble that way. So I ran to get in the auto. I hope
you don't mind," and the Unicorn leaned back on the seat cushions.
"Mind? Not in the least!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "I'm glad to give you a
ride with Alice," and he made the auto go very fast. On and on they
went, over the fields and through the woods and then, all of a sudden,
out from behind a tree jumped the big skillery-scalery alligator walking
on his hind legs and the end of his double-jointed tail.
"Halt!" he cried, like a sentry soldier, and Uncle Wiggily stopped the
auto. "At last I have caught you," said the alligator in a nutmeg grater
sort of a voice. "I want you, Uncle Wiggily, and that Alice girl also.
As for your friend in the back seat, he may go--"
"Oh, may I? Thank you!" cried the Unicorn, and with that he leaned
forward. And, as he did so the long sharp horn in his head reached over
Uncle Wiggily's shoulder, and began to tickle the alligator right under
his soft ribs.
"Oh, stop! Stop it, I tell you!" giggled the 'gator. "Stop tickling me!"
and he laughed and wiggled and squirmed like an angle worm going
fishing.
"Stop! Stop!" he begged.
"I will when you let my friends, Uncle Wiggily and Alice, alone," said
the Unicorn, still tickling away.
"Yes! Yes! I'll let them alone," promised the alligator, and he laughed
until the tears ran down his tail. And then he had to run off by
himself through the woods, and so he didn't get the bunny uncle nor
Wonderland Alice either. And he never could have gotten the Unicorn,
because of his long, ticklish horn.
So it is sometimes a good thing to take one of these stickery chaps
along when you go for an automobile ride. And if the skyrocket doesn't
fall down and stub its nose when it tries to jump over the moon with the
crumpled horn cow, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Humpty
Dumpty.