Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard | Page 7

Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady, lived with
the Littletail family of rabbits since the hollow-stump bungalow had
burned.
"Oh, dear!" sounded a grunting, woofing sort of voice over near one
window.
"Oh, dear!" squealed another voice from under the table.
"Well, well! What is the matter with you two piggie boys?" asked
Uncle Wiggily, as he took down from the sideboard his red, white and
blue barber-pole striped rheumatism crutch that Nurse Jane had gnawed
for him out of a cornstalk.
"What's the trouble, Grunter and Squeaker?" asked the rabbit
gentleman.
"We are lonesome for our brother," said the two little piggie boys No. 1
and No. 2. "We want to see Twisty-Tail."
For the first and second little pigs, after having been saved by Uncle
Wiggily, and taken home to Mother Goose, had come back to pay a
visit to the bunny gentleman.
"Well, perhaps I may meet Twisty-Tail when I go walking to-day,"
spoke Uncle Wiggily. "If I do I'll bring him home with me."
"Oh, goodie!" cried Grunter and Squeaker. For they were the first and
second little pigs, you see. Uncle Wiggily had saved Grunter from the
bad wolf when the growling creature blew down Grunter's straw house.
And, in almost the same way, the bunny uncle had saved Squeaker,
when his wooden house was blown over by the wolf. But Twisty-Tail,
the third little pig, Uncle Wiggily had not yet helped.
"I'll look for Twisty-Tail to-day," said the rabbit gentleman as he
started off for his adventure walk, which he took every afternoon and
morning.

On and on went Uncle Wiggily Longears over the snow-covered fields
and through the wood, until just as he was turning around the corner
near an old red stump, the rabbit gentleman heard a clinkity-clankity
sort of a noise, and the sound of whistling.
"Ha! Some one is happy!" thought the bunny uncle. "That's a good
sign--whistling. I wonder who it is?"
He looked around the stump corner and he saw a little animal chap,
with blue rompers on, and a fur cap stuck back of his left ear, and this
little animal chap was whistling away as merrily as a butterfly eating
butterscotch candy.
"Why, that must be the third little pig!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily.
"Hello!" called the rabbit gentleman. "Are you Twisty-Tail?"
"That's my name," answered the little pig, "and, as you see, I am
building my house of bricks, just as it tells about in the Mother Goose
book."
And, surely enough, Twisty-Tail was building a little house of red
bricks, and it was the tap-tap-tapping of his trowel, or mortar-shovel,
that made the clinkity-clankity noise.
"Do you know me, Uncle Wiggily?" asked the piggie boy. "You see I
am in a book. 'Once upon a time there were three little pigs, and----'"
"I know all about you," interrupted Uncle Wiggily. "I have met Mother
Goose, and also your two brothers."
"They didn't know how to build the right kind of houses, and so the
wolf got them," said Twisty-Tail. "I am sorry, but it had to happen that
way, just as it is in the book."
Uncle Wiggily smiled, but said nothing.
"I met a man with a load of bricks, and I begged some of them to build
my house," said Twisty-Tail. "No wolf can get me. No, sir-ee! I'll build

my house very strong, not weak like my brothers'. No, indeed!"
"I'll help you build your house," offered Uncle Wiggily, kindly, and
just as he and Twisty-Tail finished the brick house and put on the roof
it began to rain and freeze.
"We are through just in time," said Twisty-Tail, as he and the rabbit
gentleman hurried inside. "I don't believe the wolf will come out in
such weather."
But just as he said that and looked from the window, the little piggie
boy gave a cry, and said:
"Oh, here comes the bad animal now! But he can't get in my house, or
blow it over, 'cause the book says he didn't."
The wolf came up through the freezing rain and knocking on the third
piggie boy's brick house, said:
"Little pig! Little pig! Let me come in!"
"No! No! By the hair of my chinny-chin-chin, I will not let you in!"
grunted Twisty-Tail.
"Then I'll puff and I'll blow, and I'll blow your house in!" howled the
wolf.
"You can't! The book says so!" laughed the little pig. "My house is a
strong, brick one. You can't get me!"
"Just you wait!" growled the wolf. So he puffed out his cheeks, and he
blew and he blew, but he could not blow down the brick house, because
it was so strong.
"Well, I'm in no hurry," the wolf said. "I'll sit down and wait for you to
come out."
So the wolf sat down