Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard | Page 6

Uncle Wiggily built the wooden house. When it was almost finished Uncle Wiggily went out near the back door, and began piling up some cakes of ice to make a sort of box.
"What are you doing?" asked Squeaker.
"Oh, I'm just making a place where I can put these jam tarts I have for Nannie and Billie Wagtail," the rabbit gentleman answered. "I don't want the wolf to get them when he blows down your house."
"Oh, dear!" sighed Squeaker. "I rather wish, now, he didn't have to blow over my nice wooden house, and get me. But he has to, I s'pose, 'cause it's in the book."
Still, Uncle Wiggily didn't say anything, but he just sort of blinked his eyes and twinkled his pink nose, until, all of a sudden, Squeaker looked across the snowy fields, and he cried:
"Here comes the bad old wolf now!"
And, surely enough, along came the growling, howling creature. He ran up to the second little pig's wooden house, and, rapping on the door with his paw, cried:
"Little pig! Little pig! Let me come in!"
"No, no! By the hair on my chinny-chin-chin I will not let you in," said the second little pig, bravely.
"Then I'll puff and I'll blow, and I'll puff and I'll blow, and blow your house in!" howled the wolf.
Then he puffed out his cheeks, and he took a long breath and he blew with all his might and main and suddenly:
"Cracko!"
Down went the wooden house of the second little piggie, and only that Uncle Wiggily and Squeaker jumped to one side they would have been squashed as flat as a pancake, or even two pancakes.
"Quick!" cried the rabbit gentleman in the piggie boy's ear. "This way! Come with me!"
"Where are we going?" asked Squeaker, as he followed the rabbit gentleman over the cracked and broken boards, which were all that was left of the house.
"We are going to the little cabin that I made out of cakes of ice, behind your wooden house," said Uncle Wiggily. "I put the jam tarts in it, but there is also room for us, and we can hide there until the bad wolf goes off."
"Well, that isn't the way it is in the book," said the second little pig. "But----"
"No matter!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "Hurry!" So he and Squeaker hid in the ice cabin back of the blown-down house, and when the bad wolf came poking along among the broken boards, to get the little pig, he couldn't find him. For Uncle Wiggily had closed the door of the ice place, and as it was partly covered with snow the wolf could not see through.
"Oh, dear!" howled the wolf. "That's twice I've been fooled by those pigs! It isn't like the book at all. I wonder where he can have gone?"
But he could not find Squeaker or Uncle Wiggily either, and finally the wolf's nose became so cold from sniffing the ice that he had to go home to warm it, and so Uncle Wiggily and Squeaker were safe.
"Oh, I don't know how to thank you," said the second little piggie boy as the rabbit gentleman took him home to Mother Goose, after having left the jam tarts at the home of the Wagtail goats.
"Pray do not mention it," spoke Uncle Wiggily, modest like, and shy. "It was just an adventure for me."
He had another adventure the following day, Uncle Wiggily did. And if the dusting brush doesn't go swimming in the soap dish, and get all lather so that it looks like a marshmallow cocoanut cake, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the third little pig.
CHAPTER IV
UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE THIRD PIG
Uncle Wiggily Longears sat in the burrow, or house under the ground, where he and Nurse Jane 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.