Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard | Page 9

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 apple pie, and oh! how good it tasted! Oh, yum-yum!
And if the church steeple doesn't drop the ding-dong bell down in the pulpit and scare the organ, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Higgledee Piggledee.
CHAPTER VI
UNCLE WIGGILY AND HIGGLEDEE PIGGLEDEE
One day Uncle Wiggily Longears, the nice old gentleman rabbit, was sitting in an easy chair in the hollow-stump house of the Bushytail squirrel family, where he was paying a visit to Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the two squirrel boys.
There came a knock on the door, but the bunny uncle did not pay much attention to it, as he was sort of taking a little sleep after his dinner of cabbage soup with carrot ice cream on top.
Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, went out in the hall, and when she came back, with her tail all tied up in a pink ribbon, (for she was sweeping) she said:
"Uncle Wiggily, a friend of yours has come to see you."
"A friend of mine!" cried Uncle Wiggily, awakening so suddenly that his nose stopped twinkling. "I hope it isn't the bad old fox from the Orange Mountains."
"No," answered Nurse Jane with a smile, "it is a lady."
"A lady?" exclaimed the old rabbit gentleman, getting up quickly, and looking in the glass to see that his ears were not criss-crossed. "Who can it be?"
"It is Mother Goose," went on Nurse Jane. "She says you were so kind as to help Little Boy Blue the other day, when his horn