"Then we will give them a dusting with our tails, and that will finish them," said Billie, and the squirrel boys did, so the black-boards were very clean.
"Now it"s time to go home," said Uncle Wiggily. So he locked the school, putting the key under the doormat, where the lady mouse could find it in the morning, and, with the Bushytail squirrel boys, he started off through the woods.
"You and Billie can go back to your play, now, Johnnie," said the bunny uncle. "It was good of you to leave it to come back to do what you were told."
The three animal friends hopped and scrambled on together, until, all of a sudden, the bad old fox, who so often had made trouble for Uncle Wiggily, jumped out from behind a bush, crying:
"Ah, ha! Now I have you, Mr. Longears--and two squirrels besides.
Good luck!"
"Bad luck!" whispered Billie.
The fox made a grab for the rabbit gentleman, but, all of a sudden, the paw of the bad creature slipped in some mud and down he went, head first, into a puddle of water, coughing and sneezing.
"Come on, Uncle Wiggily!" quickly cried Billie and Johnnie. "This is our chance. We"ll run away before the fox gets the water out of his eyes. He can"t see us now."
So away ran the rabbit gentleman and the squirrel boys, but soon the fox had dried his eyes on his big brush of a tail, and on he came after them.
"Oh, I"ll get you! I"ll get you!" he cried, running very fast. But Uncle Wiggily and Billie and Johnnie ran fast, too. The fox was coming closer, however, and Billie, looking back, said:
"Oh, I know what let"s do, Uncle Wiggily. Let"s take the path that leads over the duck pond ocean. That"s shorter, and we can get to your bungalow before the fox can catch us. He won"t dare come across the bridge over the duck pond, for Old Dog Percival will come out and bite him if he does."
"Very well," said Uncle Wiggily, "over the bridge we will go."
But alas! Also sorrowfulness and sadness! When the three friends got to the bridge it wasn"t there. The wind had blown the bridge down, and there was no way of getting across the duck pond ocean, for neither Uncle Wiggily nor the squirrel boys could swim very well.
"Oh, what are we going to do?" cried Billie, sadly.
"We must get across somehow!" chattered Johnnie, "for here comes the fox!"
And, surely enough the fox was coming, having by this time gotten all the water out of his eyes, so he could see very well.
"Oh, if we only had a boat!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, looking along the sh.o.r.e of the pond, but there was no boat to be seen.
Nearer and nearer came the fox! Uncle Wiggily and the squirrel boys were just going to jump in the water, whether or not they could swim, when, all at once, a big white birch tree on the edge of the woods near the pond, said:
"Listen, Uncle Wiggily and I will save you. Strip off some of my bark.
It will not hurt me, and you can make a little canoe boat of it, as the Indians used to do. Then, in the birch bark boat you can sail across the water and the fox can"t get you."
"Good! Thank you!" cried the bunny uncle. With their sharp teeth he, Billie and Johnnie peeled off long strips of birch bark. They quickly bent them in the shape of a boat and sewed up the ends with long thorns for needles and ribbon gra.s.s for thread.
"Quick! Into the birch bark boat!" cried Uncle Wiggily, and they all jumped in, just as the fox came along. Billie and Johnnie held up their bushy tails, and Uncle Wiggily held up his tall silk hat for sails, and soon they were safe on the other sh.o.r.e and the fox, not being able to swim, could not get them.
So that"s how the birch tree of the woods saved the bunny uncle and the squirrels, for which, I am very glad, as I want to write more stories about them. And if the gold fish doesn"t tickle the wax doll"s nose with his tail when she looks in the tank to see what he has for breakfast, I"ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the b.u.t.ternut tree.
STORY X
UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE b.u.t.tERNUT TREE
"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper of Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit, as she looked in the pantry of the hollow stump bungalow one day. "Well, I do declare!"
"What"s the matter?" asked Mr. Longears, peeping over the top of his spectacles. "I hope that the chimney hasn"t fallen down, or the egg beater run away with the potato masher."
"No, nothing like that," Nurse Jane said. "But we haven"t any b.u.t.ter!"
"No b.u.t.ter?" spoke Uncle Wiggily, sort of puzzled like, and abstracted.
"Not a bit of b.u.t.ter for supper," went on Nurse Jane, sadly.
"Ha! That sounds like something from Mother Goose. Not a bit of b.u.t.ter for supper," laughed Uncle Wiggily. "Not a bit of batter-b.u.t.ter for the pitter-patter supper. If Peter Piper picked a pit of peckled pippers--"
"Oh, don"t start that!" begged Nurse Jane. "All I need is some supper for b.u.t.ter--no some bupper for batter--oh, dear! I"ll never get it straight!" she cried.
"I"ll say it for you," said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. "I know what you want--some b.u.t.ter for supper. I"ll go get it for you."
"Thank you," Nurse Jane exclaimed, and so the old rabbit gentleman started off over the fields and through the woods for the b.u.t.ter store.
The monkey-doodle gentleman waited on him, and soon Uncle Wiggily was on his way back to the hollow stump bungalow with the b.u.t.ter for supper, and he was thinking how nice the carrot m.u.f.fins would taste, for Nurse Jane had promised to make some, and Uncle Wiggily was sort of smacking his whiskers and twinkling his nose, when, all at once, he heard some one in the woods calling:
"Uncle Wiggily! Oh, I say, Uncle Wiggily! Can"t you stop for a moment and say how-d"-do?"
"Why, of course, I can," answered the bunny, and, looking around the corner of an old log, he saw Grandpa Whack.u.m, the old beaver gentleman, who lived with Toodle and Noodle Flat-tail, the beaver boys.
"Come in and sit down for a minute and rest yourself," invited Grandpa Whack.u.m.
"I will," said Uncle Wiggily. "And I"ll leave my b.u.t.ter outside where it will be cool," for Grandpa Whack.u.m lived down in an underground house, where it was so warm, in summer, that b.u.t.ter would melt.
Grandpa Whack.u.m was a beaver, and he was called Whack.u.m because he used to whack his broad, flat tail on the ground, like beating a drum, to warn the other beavers of danger. Beavers, you know, are something like big muskrats, and they like water. Their tails are flat, like a pancake or egg turner.
"Well, how are things with you, and how is Nurse Jane?" asked Grandpa Whack.u.m.
"Oh, everything is fine," said Uncle Wiggily. "Nurse Jane is well.
I"ve just been to the store to get her some b.u.t.ter."
"That"s just like you; always doing something for some one," said Grandpa Whack.u.m, pleased like.
Then the two friends talked for some little while longer, until it was almost 6 o"clock, and time for Uncle Wiggily to go.
"I"ll take my b.u.t.ter and travel along," he said. But when he went outside, where he had left the pound of b.u.t.ter on a flat stump, it wasn"t there.
"Why, this is queer," said the bunny uncle. "I wonder if Nurse Jane could have come along and taken it to the hollow stump bungalow herself?"
"More likely a bad fox took the b.u.t.ter," spoke the old gentleman beaver. "But we can soon tell. I"ll look in the dirt around the stump and see whose footprints are there. A fox makes different tracks from a muskrat."
So Grandpa Whack.u.m looked and he said: