"My peanuts are hot and brown, Finest ones in all the town.
Nice and juicy--good to chew, I have some for all of you."
"Well, come on," said the elephant to Uncle Wiggily, "put some peanuts in your valise, and I will carry the rest."
"How; in your trunk?" asked the rabbit.
"No, I"m going to wrap them up in a bundle, and tie them on my back. I want my trunk to squirt water through when it gets hot, as I think the sun is going to be very scorchy to-day."
So he tied the bundle of peanuts on his back, and then the two friends journeyed on together. Well, it did get very hot, and it kept on getting hotter, and there wasn"t much shade.
"Oh my, I wish it would rain a little shower!" said Uncle Wiggily, as he wiped his ears with his handkerchief. "I am as hot as an oven."
"I can soon fix that part of it," said the elephant. And pretty soon he came to a spring of cold water, and he sucked a lot of it up in his hollow trunk, and then he squirted a nice cool, fine spray of it over the rabbit, just as if it came out of a hose with which papa waters the garden or lawn.
"My! That feels fine!" said the rabbit. Then the elephant squirted some water on himself, and they went on, feeling much better.
But still they were warm again in a short time, and then the elephant said:
"I know what I am going to do. I am going to get some more ice cream cones. They will cool us off better than anything else. I"ll go for them and bring back some big ones. You stay here in the shade, Uncle Wiggily, but don"t walk on ahead, or you may tumble into the water again."
"I"ll not," promised the rabbit. "I"ll wait right here for you."
Off the elephant started to get the ice cream cones and pretty soon he came to the store where the man sold them.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
"I want two of your very coldest cones," said the elephant to the man, for sometimes, in stories, you know, elephants can talk to people. "I want a big strawberry cone for myself," the elephant went on, "and a smaller one for my friend, Uncle Wiggily, the rabbit."
"Very well," said the man, "but you will have to wait until I make a large cone for you."
So that man took seventeen thousand, six hundred and eighty-seven little cones and made them into one big one for the elephant. Then he took eighteen thousand, two hundred and ninety-one quarts of strawberry ice cream, and an extra pint, and put it into the big cone. Then he made a rabbit-sized ice cream cone for Uncle Wiggily and gave them both to the elephant, who carried them in his trunk so they wouldn"t melt.
But I must tell you what was happening to Uncle Wiggily all this while. As he sat there in the shade of the apple tree, thinking, about his fortune and whether he would ever find it, all of a sudden he saw something round and squirming sticking itself toward him through the bushes.
"Ha! the elephant has come back so quietly that I didn"t hear him,"
thought the rabbit. "That is his trunk he is sticking out at me. I guess he thinks I don"t see him, and he is going to tickle me. I hope he has those ice cream cones."
Well, the crawly, squirming, round thing, which was like the small end of an elephant"s trunk, kept coming closer and closer to the rabbit.
"Now, I"ll play a trick on that elephant--I"ll tickle his trunk for him, and he"ll think it"s a mosquito!" said Uncle Wiggily to himself.
He was just about to do this, when suddenly the crawly thing made a sort of jump toward him, and before the rabbit could move he found himself grasped by a big, ugly snake, who wrapped himself around the rabbit just as ladies wrap their fur around their necks in the winter. It wasn"t the elephant"s trunk at all, but a bad snake.
"Now, I have you!" hissed the snake like a steam radiator in Uncle Wiggily"s left ear. "I"m going to squeeze you to death and then eat you,"
and he began to squeeze that poor rabbit just like the wash-lady squeezes clothes in the wringer.
"Oh, my breath! You are crushing all the breath out of me!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "Please let go of me!"
"No!" hissed the snake, and he squeezed harder than ever.
"Oh, this is the end of me!" gasped the rabbit, when all of a sudden he heard a great crashing in the bushes. Then a voice cried:
"Here, you bad snake, let go of Uncle Wiggily."
And bless my hat! If the elephant didn"t rush up, just in time, and he grabbed hold of that snake"s tail in his trunk, and unwound the snake from around the rabbit, and then the elephant with a long swing of his trunk threw the snake so high up in the air that I guess he hasn"t yet come down.
"I was just in time to save you!" said the elephant to Uncle Wiggily.
"Here, eat this ice cream cone and you"ll feel better."
So the rabbit did this, and his breath came back and he was all right again, but he made up his mind never to try to tickle a crawly thing again until he was sure it wasn"t a snake.
So that"s all for the present, if you please, but in case my fur hat doesn"t sleep out in the hammock all night, and catch cold in the head so that it sneezes and wakes up the alarm clock, I"ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the water lilies.
STORY XVI
UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE WATER LILIES
Uncle Wiggily was hopping along through the woods one day, and pretty soon, as he went past a cute little house, made out of corncobs, he heard some one calling to him.
"Oh, Mr. Rabbit," a voice said, "have you seen anything of my little girl?" And there stood a nice mamma cat, looking anxiously about.
"I don"t know," answered Uncle Wiggily, as he stopped in the shade of a tree, and set down his valise. "Was your little girl named Sarah, Mrs.
Cat?"
"Oh, indeed, my little girl is not named Sarah," said Mrs. Cat. "She is called s...o...b..ll, and she is just as cute as she can be. She is all white, like a ball of snow, and so we call her s...o...b..ll. But she is lost, and I"m afraid I"ll never find her again," and the kittie"s mamma began to cry, and she wiped her tears on her ap.r.o.n.
"Oh, don"t worry. Never mind. I"ll find her for you," said the kind old gentleman rabbit.
"I can"t find my fortune but I believe I can find s...o...b..ll. Now, tell me which way she went away, and I"ll go search for her."
"I didn"t see her go out of the house," said Mrs. Cat, "because I was making a cherry pie, and I was very busy. s...o...b..ll was playing on the floor, with a ball of soft yarn, and it rolled out of doors. She raced out after it, and I thought she would soon be back. I put the cherry pie in the oven and then when I went to look for her she was gone. Oh, dear! I just know some horrid dog has hurt her."
"Please don"t worry," said Uncle Wiggily. "I"ll find her for you. I"ll start right off, and if I can"t find her I"ll get a policeman, and he can, for the police always find lost children."
So Uncle Wiggily started off, leaving his valise with Mrs. Cat, but taking his crutch with him, for he thought he might need it to beat off any bad dogs if they chased after s...o...b..ll.
First the old gentleman rabbit looked carefully all along the road, but he couldn"t see anything of the lost p.u.s.s.y cat.
"Perhaps she may be up a tree," he said to himself. "If a dog chased her she would climb up one, and perhaps she is afraid to come down."
So he looked up into all the trees, and he even shook some of them in order to see up them better, but he did not discover the p.u.s.s.y cat. Then he called:
"s...o...b..ll! s...o...b..ll! s...o...b..ll! Where are you?"