Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard | Page 8

on his tail to wait outside the brick house. After a
while Twisty-Tail began to get hungry.

"Did you bring anything to eat, Uncle Wiggily?" he asked.
"No, I didn't," answered the rabbit gentleman. "But if the old wolf
would go away I'd take you where your two brothers are visiting with
me in the Littletail family rabbit house and you could have all you want
to eat."
Rut the wolf would not go away, even when Uncle Wiggily asked him
to, most politely, making a bow and twinkling his nose.
"I'm going to stay here all night," the wolf growled. "I am not going
away. I am going to get that third little pig!"
"Are you? Well, we'll see about that!" cried the rabbit gentleman. Then
he took a rib out of his umbrella, and with a piece of his shoe lace (that
he didn't need) for a string he made a bow like the Indians used to have.
"If I only had an arrow now I could shoot it from my umbrella-bow, hit
the wolf on the nose and make him go away," said Uncle Wiggily.
Then he looked out of the window and saw where the rain, dripping
from the roof, had frozen into long, sharp icicles.
"Ha!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "An icicle will make the best kind of an
arrow! Now I'll shoot the wolf, not hard enough to hurt him, but just
hard enough to make him run away."
Reaching out the window Uncle Wiggily broke off a sharp icicle. He
put this ice arrow in his bow and, pulling back the shoe string, "twang!"
he shot the wolf on the nose.
"Oh, wow! Oh, double-wow! Oh, custard cake!" howled the wolf.
"This isn't in the Mother Goose book at all. Not a single pig did I get!
Oh, my nose! Ouch!"
Then he ran away, and Uncle Wiggily and Twisty-Tail could come
safely out of the brick house, which they did, hurrying home to the
bunny house where Grunter and Squeaker were, to get something to eat.
So everything came out right, you see, and Uncle Wiggily saved the

three little pigs, one after the other.
And if the canary bird doesn't go swimming in the rice pudding, and eat
out all the raisin seeds, so none is left for the parrot, I'll tell you next of
Uncle Wiggily and Little Boy Blue.
CHAPTER V
UNCLE WIGGILY AND LITTLE BOY BLUE
"Uncle Wiggily, are you very busy to-day?" asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy
Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, who, with the old rabbit
gentleman, was on a visit to the Bushytail family of squirrels in their
hollow-tree home.
After staying a while with the Littletail rabbits, when his hollow-stump
bungalow had burned down, the bunny uncle went to visit Johnnie and
Billie Bushytail.
"Are you very busy, Uncle Wiggily?" asked the muskrat lady.
"Why, no, Nurse Jane, not so very," answered the bunny uncle. "Is
there something you would like me to do for you?" he asked, with a
polite bow.
"Well, Mrs. Bushytail and I have just baked some pies," said the
muskrat lady, "and we thought perhaps you might like to take one to
your friend, Grandfather Goosey Gander."
[Illustration]
"Fine!" cried Uncle Wiggily, making his nose twinkle like a star on a
Christmas tree in the dark. "Grandpa Goosey will be glad to get a pie.
I'll take him one."
"We have it all ready for you," said Mrs. Bushytail, the squirrel mother
of Johnnie and Billie, as she came in the sitting-room. "It's a nice hot
pie, and it will keep your paws warm, Uncle Wiggily, as you go over

the ice and snow through the woods and across the fields."
"Fine!" cried the bunny uncle again. "I'll get ready and go at once."
Uncle Wiggily put on his warm fur coat, fastened his tall silk hat on his
head, with his ears sticking up through holes cut in the brim, so it
would not blow off, and then, taking his red, white and blue striped
rheumatism crutch, that Nurse Jane had gnawed for him out of a
cornstalk, away he started. He carried the hot apple pie in a basket over
his paw.
"Grandpa Goosey will surely like this pie," said Uncle Wiggily to
himself, as he lifted the napkin that was over it to take a little sniff. "It
makes me hungry myself. And how nice and warm it is," he went on, as
he put one cold paw in the basket to warm it; warm his paw I mean, not
the basket.
Over the fields and through the woods hopped the bunny uncle. It
began to snow a little, but Uncle Wiggily did not mind that, for he was
well wrapped up.
When he was about halfway to Grandpa Goosey's house