Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard | Page 9

Howard R. Garis
Uncle Wiggily
heard, from behind a pile of snow, a sad sort of crying voice.
"Hello!" exclaimed the bunny uncle, "that sounds like some one in
trouble. I must see if I can help them."
Uncle Wiggily looked over the top of the pile of snow, and, sitting on
the ground, in front of a big icicle, was a boy all dressed in blue. Even
his eyes were blue, but you could not very well see them, as they were
filled with tears.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. "This is quite too bad!
What is the matter, little fellow; and who are you?"
"I am Little Boy Blue, from the home of Mother Goose," was the
answer, "and the matter is that it's lost!"

"What is lost?" asked Uncle. "If it's a penny I will help you find it."
"It isn't a penny," answered Boy Blue. "It's the hay stack which I have
to sleep under. I can't find it, and I must see where it is or else things
won't be as they are in the Mother Goose book. Don't you know what it
says?" And he sang:
"Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn, There are sheep in the meadow
and cows in the corn. Where's Little Boy Blue, who looks after the
sheep? Why he's under the hay stack, fast asleep.
"Only I can't go to sleep under the hay stack, Uncle Wiggily, because I
can't find it. And, oh, dear! I don't know what to do!" and Little Boy
Blue cried harder than ever, so that some of his tears froze into little
round marbles of ice, like hail stones.
"There, there, now!" said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. "Of course you can't
find a hay stack in the winter. They are all covered with snow."
"Are they?" asked Boy Blue, real surprised like.
"Of course, they are!" cried Uncle Wiggily, in his most jolly voice.
"Besides, you wouldn't want to sleep under a hay stack, even if there
was one here, in the winter. You would catch cold and have the
sniffle-snuffles."
"That's so, I might," Boy Blue said, and he did not cry so hard now.
"But that isn't all, Uncle Wiggily," he went on, nodding at the rabbit
gentleman. "It isn't all my trouble."
"What else is the matter?" asked the bunny uncle.
"It's my horn," spoke the little boy who looked after the cows and sheep.
"I can't make any music tunes on my horn. And I really have to blow
my horn, you know, for it says in the Mother Goose book that I must.
See, I can't blow it a bit." And Boy Blue put his horn to his lips, puffed
out his cheeks and blew as hard as he could, but no sound came out.

"Let me try," said Uncle Wiggily. The rabbit gentleman took the horn
and he, also, tried to blow. He blew so hard he almost blew off his tall
silk hat, but no sound came from the horn.
"Ah, I see what the trouble is!" cried the bunny uncle with a jolly laugh,
looking down inside the "toot-tooter." "It is so cold that the tunes are all
frozen solid in your horn. But I have a hot apple pie here in my basket
that I was taking to Grandpa Goosey Gander. I'll hold the cold horn on
the hot pie and the tunes will thaw out."
"Oh, have you a pie in there?" asked Little Boy Blue. "Is it the
Christmas pie into which Little Jack Horner put in his thumb and pulled
out a plum?"
"Not quite, but nearly the same," laughed Uncle Wiggily. "Now to thaw
out the frozen horn."
The bunny uncle put Little Boy Blue's horn in the basket with the hot
apple pie. Soon the ice was melted out of the horn, and Uncle Wiggily
could blow on it, and play tunes, and so could Boy Blue.
Tootity-toot-toot tunes they both played.
"Now you are all right!" cried the bunny uncle. "Come along with me
and you may have a piece of this pie for yourself. And you may stay
with Grandpa Goosey Gander until summer comes, and then blow your
horn for the sheep in the meadow and the cows in the corn. There is no
need, now, for you to stay out in the cold and look for a haystack under
which to sleep."
"No, I guess not," said Boy Blue. "I'll come with you, Uncle Wiggily.
And thank you, so much, for helping me. I don't know what would have
happened only for you."
"Pray do not mention it," politely said Uncle Wiggily with a laugh.
Then he and little Boy Blue hurried on through the snow, and soon they
were at Grandpa Goosey's house with the warm
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