"We"ll have a lovely time," thought Matilda, who was called Brighteyes for short. "We"ll dress up all our dolls and have a play-party, and maybe mamma will give us real things to eat."
Well, Brighteyes was thinking so much about the party, and about Jennie Chipmunk, whom she had not seen in some time, that she didn"t pay much attention to anything else. She was going along, hippity-hop, just as Sister Sallie went to the barber shop, when all of a sudden something whizzed right past the nose of Brighteyes and almost hit her.
"My goodness me, sakes alive and a tin dishpan! What"s that?" she exclaimed. "I wonder if it could have been that June bug who told Buddy stories so nicely?"
Then she looked all around and she didn"t see anything of a bug, and she didn"t hear his wings buzzing, so she thought it couldn"t have been him.
Then, bless me! if something more didn"t shoot right past Brighteyes with a whizz and a whozz, making a funny noise, you know. And this time she saw what it was. It was an arrow, the kind that are shot from bows, you understand.
"Oh, the Indians are after me! The Indians are after me!" cried poor Brighteyes in fright, for you see she had read in her school reader about the Indians shooting arrows.
Then the little guinea pig girl started to run, but before she had taken three steps and a half, if another arrow didn"t come whizzing through the bushes at her, and this time it was so close that it just touched her left ear.
This frightened her so that she fell down, and before she could get up to run away, if out from behind a tree didn"t leap a bad boy.
So it wasn"t an Indian shooting the arrows, after all, which, perhaps, was a good thing, as Indians can shoot very straight and might have hurt Brighteyes. No, it was a bad boy.
I call him bad because he shot at Brighteyes, and I guess before I"m through with this story that you"ll call him bad also.
Well, that boy ran right at Brighteyes, and before she knew what was happening he had grabbed her.
"Wow!" cried the boy. "I"ve got it! I shot it! I"ve got a rabbit!"
"Ha! That ain"t a rabbit!" exclaimed another boy, coming out of the bushes, "that"s a guinea pig. Where did you hit it?"
"I don"t know. It doesn"t seem to be hurt anywhere. But I was sure I hit it. But, maybe, the arrow only stunned it. Anyhow, I"ve got it. Now we"ll take it home, and put it in a cage, and charge five cents for all the other boys to see it."
"Sure," said the second boy. "You"re a good shot with your bow and arrow. Come on, let me carry the guinea pig."
"No," replied the first boy, "I"m going to carry it myself. I wonder if you carry "em by their ears, like you do rabbits?" Then he tried to get hold of Brighteyes" ears, and he could hardly find them, as they were so small, and, of course, he couldn"t take hold of them.
But, oh, dear! how roughly he handled that poor little guinea pig girl!
When he couldn"t get hold of her ears he grabbed her by the hind legs and actually turned her upside down, and then what should happen but that the yeast cake fell out of her ap.r.o.n pocket.
"Ha! That"s funny!" cried the boy who held Brighteyes. "I never knew that guinea pigs ate yeast cakes. This must be a smart one. We"ll teach it to do tricks, and then we can charge ten cents to see it. Oh, I"m glad I caught it."
And he held on more tightly to Brighteyes, for she was wiggling and squirming, trying to get away.
Oh, how frightened she was, when she heard the boys say that they were going to shut her up in a cage! She thought she would never see her mamma, and papa, and Buddy again. Big tears came into her eyes, and she trembled all over.
But do you s"pose that bad boy and the other one cared? Not the least bit! First one held Brighteyes, and then the other, to see how heavy she was, and then they took her up, first by one leg and then by the other, and, if she had had a tail, they would have held her up by that, and probably pulled it, too, for all I know.
You see those two boys had been playing they were Indians in the woods with their bows and arrows, and perhaps that made them act so cruelly.
"Let"s hurry home now and put it in a cage," said the bad boy, and he and the other boy started off, carrying Brighteyes. But wait, don"t be frightened, or worried, for something is going to happen immediately, which is very soon.
All at once there was a whizzing and a whozzing in the air, and a buzzing, bizzing sound, and that kind old June bug came sailing along.
He saw those bad boys taking Brighteyes away, and the bug knew at once that she was Buddy"s sister.
So what did he do but wiggle his wings about a thousand times a minute, I guess, and fly right at the boy who held the guinea pig girl!
Right at the bad boy flew the bug, and he hit him first in one eye and then the other and scared him so that the bad chap was glad enough to let go of poor Brighteyes in a hurry.
Then the other boy stepped on the yeast cake, and it flattened out, and he slipped on it, and fell down, and he thought a bear was after him, and he yelled, and the other boy yelled, and then they both ran away, and Brighteyes was saved.
She thanked the June bug, and he said he was glad he could help her, and he flew back to the grocery and got another yeast cake for her. Then Brighteyes hurried home.
Now the next story is going to be about Buddy Pigg"s great run--that is, if we have peaches and cream for supper and the rag man doesn"t take my rubber boots for his goat to wear to the party.
STORY XVII
BUDDY"S GREAT RUN
Well, I didn"t have peaches and cream for supper last night, but I had strawberry shortcake, which is almost as good, so I can tell you a story, anyhow.
Once upon a time, Oh, I guess it must have been about two weeks after Brighteyes was caught by the bad boys, and rescued by the June bug, Buddy Pigg was sitting on his front steps, wishing he had something to do.
"Mother," he asked, "can I go down in the brook, paddling? Jimmie Wibblewobble is down there."
"No," said Mrs. Pigg kindly, "you are not quite well enough to go in the water, Buddy. But you may have five cents for an ice cream cone."
Well, Buddy walked up to the store, got a vanilla ice cream cone, and had just finished the last of it, even down to the sharp point of the cone, where there wasn"t any ice cream, when who should come along but Billie and Johnnie Bushytail. They had their catching gloves, and a ball and a bat, and when the squirrel boys saw Buddy they called out:
"Come on, let"s have a game of baseball."
"All right," agreed Buddy. "But who else will play?"
"Oh! we"ll get Sammie Littletail, and Bully and Bawly, the frogs, and Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow, and Jimmie Wibblewobble, and we"ll have a fine game," said Billie Bushytail.
So they walked along, and pretty soon they met Sammie Littletail, and then a little while after that they met the two Bow Wows, and then who should come hopping along, but Bully and Bawly, the two frogs, and, if you"ll believe me, a moment after that, along came Jimmie Wibblewobble.
Then they had enough for a fine baseball game, and they went to a nice, green meadow where they could play. Well, Johnnie Bushytail was up at the bat first, and he knocked the ball so far that Bully, who was playing out in the far-off part of the field, had to take about sixteen and a half hops before he could get it. But by that time Johnnie was back at home plate safe.
Then it came Sammie Littletail"s turn, and he knocked the ball so high that it went up in a tree and stayed there, and didn"t come down.
"Oh, that"s no way to play!" exclaimed Jimmie Wibblewobble. "Now we haven"t any ball. What did you do that for, Sammie?"
"Well, I couldn"t help it; could I?" asked Sammie, and he threw the bat up, trying to knock down the ball.
But it wouldn"t come down, and then they all threw up stones and sticks, but still that ball wouldn"t come down, and then Billie and Johnnie Bushytail climbed up and they had it down in about two frisks of their big, long tails.
Well, they said that Sammie Littletail was out for knocking the ball up in the tree, and he didn"t like it, but he gave in, and the game went on. Then Jimmie Wibblewobble knocked a ball, oh! so far and so high that it was almost out of sight.
"n.o.body can catch that!" cried Jimmie, as he started for first base.