“Oh, dear! That is too bad! Why not?” asked the bunny uncle, in a sad and sorrowful voice.
“Because there is no chocolate,” went on Nurse Jane. “Since we came to our new hollow-stump bungalow I have not made any cakes, and to-day I forgot to order the chocolate from the store for this one.”
“Never mind,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “I’ll go to the store and get the chocolate for you. In fact, I would go to two stores and part of another one for the sake of having a chocolate cake.”
“All right,” spoke Nurse Jane. “If you get me the chocolate I’ll make one.”
Putting on his overcoat, with his tall silk hat tied down over his ears so they would not blow away—I mean so his hat would not blow off—and with his rheumatism crutch under his paw, off started the old gentleman rabbit, across the fields and through the woods to the chocolate store.
After buying what he wanted for Nurse Jane’s cake, the old gentleman rabbit started back for the hollow-stump bungalow. On the way, he passed a toy store, and he stopped to look in the window at the pop-guns, the spinning-tops, the dolls, the Noah’s Arks, with the animals marching out of them, and all things like that.
“It makes me young again to look at toys,” said the bunny uncle. Then he went on a little farther until, all at once, as he was passing a bush, he heard from behind it the sound of crying.
“Ha! Some one in trouble again,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I wonder if it can be Little Boy Blue?” He looked, but, instead of seeing the sheep-boy, whom he had once helped, Uncle Wiggily saw a little girl.
“Ha! Who are you?” the bunny uncle asked, “and what is the matter?”
“I am Little Bo Peep,” was the answer, “and I have lost my sheep, and don’t know where to find them.”
“Why, let them alone, and they’ll come home, wagging their tails behind them,” said Uncle Wiggily quickly, and he laughed jolly like and happy, because he had made a rhyme to go with what Bo Peep said.
“Yes, I know that’s the way it is in the Mother Goose book,” said Little Bo Peep, “but I’ve waited and waited, and let them alone ever so long, but they haven’t come home. And now I’m afraid they’ll freeze.”
“Ha! That’s so. It is pretty cold for sheep to be out,” said Uncle Wiggily, as he looked across the snow-covered field, and toward the woods where there were icicles hanging down from the trees.
“Look here, Little Bo Peep,” went on the bunny uncle. “I think your sheep must have gone home long ago, wagging their tails behind them. And you, too, had better run home to Mother Goose. Tell her you met me and that I sent you home. And, if I find your sheep, I’ll send them along, too. So don’t worry.”
“Oh, but I don’t like to go home without my sheep,” said Bo Peep, and tears came into her eyes. “I ought to bring them with me. But today I went skating on Crystal Lake, up in the Lemon-Orange Mountains, and I forgot all about my sheep. Now I am afraid to go home without them. Oh, dear!”
Uncle Wiggily thought for a minute, then he said:
“Ha! I have it! I know where I can get you some sheep to take home with you. Then Mother Goose will say it is all right. Come with me.”
“Where are you going?” asked Bo Peep.
“To get you some sheep.” And Uncle Wiggily led the little shepardess girl back to the toy store, in the window of which he had stopped to look a while ago.
“Give Bo Peep some of your toy woolly sheep, if you please,” said Uncle Wiggily to the toy store man. “She can take them home with her, while her own sheep are safe in some warm place, I’m sure. But now she must have some sort of sheep to take home with her in place of the lost ones, so it will come out all right, as it is in the book. And these toy woolly sheep will do as well as any; won’t they, Little Bo Peep?”
“Oh, yes, they will; thank you very much, Uncle Wiggily,” answered Bo Peep, making a pretty little bow. Then the rabbit gentleman bought her ten little toy, woolly sheep, each one with a tail which Bo Peep could wag for them, and one toy lamb went: “Baa! Baa! Baa!” as real as anything, having a little phonograph talking machine inside him.
“Now I can go home to Mother Goose and make believe these are my lost sheep,” said Bo Peep, “and it will be all right.”
“And here is a piece of chocolate for you to eat,” said Uncle Wiggily. Then Bo Peep hurried home with her fleecy toy sheep, and, later on, she found her real ones, all nice and warm, in the barn where the Cow with the Crumpled Horn lived. Mother Goose laughed in her jolliest way when she saw the toy sheep Uncle Wiggily had bought Bo Peep.
“It’s just like him!” said Mother Goose.
And if the goldfish doesn’t climb out of his tank and hide in the sardine tin, where the stuffed olives can’t find him, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Tommie Tucker.
CHAPTER VIII
UNCLE WIGGILY AND TOMMIE TUCKER
“Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” called Susie Littletail, the rabbit girl, one day, as she went over to see her bunny uncle in his hollow-stump bungalow. “Oh, Uncle Wiggily! Isn’t it too bad?”
“Isn’t what too bad?” asked the old gentleman rabbit, as he scratched his nose with his left ear, and put his glasses in his pocket, for he was tired of reading the paper, and felt like going out for a walk.
“Too bad about my talking and singing doll, that I got for Christmas,” said Susie. “She won’t sing any more. Something inside her is broken.”
“Broken? That’s too bad!” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “Let me see. What’s her name?”
“Sallieann Peachbasket Shortcake,” answered Susie.
“What a funny name,” laughed the bunny uncle.
Uncle Wiggily took Susie’s doll, which had been given her at Christmas, and looked at it. Inside the doll was a sort of phonograph, or talking machine—a very small one, you know—and when you pushed on a little button in back of the doll’s dress she would laugh and talk. But, best of all, when she was in working order, she would sing a verse, which went something like this:
“I hope you’ll like my little song,
I will not sing it very long.
I have two shoes upon my feet,
And when I’m hungry, then I eat.”
Uncle Wiggily wound up the spring in the doll’s side, and then he pressed the button—like a shoe button—in her back. But this time Susie’s doll did not talk, she did not laugh, and, instead of singing, she only made a scratchy noise like a phonograph when it doesn’t want to play, or like Bully No-Tail, the frog boy, when he has a cold in his head.
“Oh, dear! This is quite too bad!” said Uncle Wiggily. “Quite indeed.”
“Isn’t it!” exclaimed Susie. “Do you think you can fix her, Uncle?”
Mr. Longears turned the doll upside down and shook her. Things rattled inside her, but even then she did not sing.
“Oh, dear!” cried Susie, her little pink nose going twinkle-inkle, just as did Uncle Wiggily’s. “What can we do?”
“You leave it to me, Susie,” spoke the old rabbit gentleman. “I’ll take the doll to the toy shop, where I bought Little Bo Peep’s sheep, and have her mended.”
“Oh, goodie!” cried Susie, clasping her paws. “Now