Part 5

“What has happened?” asked the rabbit gentleman himself, as he came hopping out, with his red white and blue striped barber pole crutch that Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy had gnawed for him out of a cornstalk.

“I am very sorry,” spoke Jocko politely, “but your airship has run away.”

“Run away?” cried Uncle Wiggily.

“Yes, run away. I loosened the knot in the rope, and up it went—the airship went up, I mean—not the rope,” said Jocko politely.

“Yes, so I see,” remarked Uncle Wiggily, looking upward. And there his airship was floating high above the trees, and no one was in it, except the sofa cushions, to bring it down again, and they could not do it.

“I am very sorry,” said Jocko. “I will see if I can’t get it down for you.” So he climbed the tallest tree there was, but still the airship was far above his reach.

“You can never get it!” cried Nurse Jane sadly.

“Perhaps I can help you,” spoke an elephant gentleman coming along just then. “I used to be a cowboy in a Wild West show, and perhaps I can throw my rope lasso up high enough to get it around the airship and pull it down.”

So he threw his rope lasso with his trunk, but the airship was still too high for him to reach.

“You will have to get an eagle bird to fly up and bring it down,” said Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy.

“Ha! No! I have a better plan than that!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Run over to Sammie Littletail’s house and get his popgun,” said the rabbit gentleman to the monkey boy. “I will put some beans in the popgun, shoot them at the balloons, burst holes in them to let out the hot air, and down my airship will come of itself.”

And that’s exactly what Uncle Wiggily did. With Sammie’s popgun he shot the balloons full of holes, knowing he could easily mend them again, and when there was no hot air in them to hold them up, down came the airship, fluttering slowly to the earth.

“Thank goodness!” cried Nurse Jane. “You have your airship again, Uncle Wiggily. Don’t you ever do that again, Jocko Kinkytail.”

“I guess he won’t,” spoke Uncle Wiggily kindly, as he began to mend the burst balloons. And Jocko never did.

And if the rubber plant in our yard doesn’t stretch over the fence and pick a rose off the gooseberry bush, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the butterfly.

STORY XVI

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE BUTTERFLY

“Are you going out in your airship this morning?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy of Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, as he left the breakfast table one day.

“Well, I did not intend to,” he said. “The electric fan that goes around whizzie-izze, and makes me sail through the clouds, is broken, and I shall have to have it mended. So I am not going in the airship to-day. Was there anything you wanted me to do for you?”

“Why, yes, there was,” replied the muskrat lady, as she looked at the end of her tail, to see if it needed dusting. But it did not, I am glad to say. “I wish you would bring me a yeast cake from the store if you are near there. I am going to bake bread,” said Nurse Jane.

“Most gladly will I bring you a yeast cake,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, with a low and polite bow. “Only I will walk after it, instead of going in my airship. And, while I am out walking, instead of airshipping, I will look for an adventure also.”

“Very good,” answered Nurse Jane, as she carried the butter out in the hammock where it could swing and keep cool.

So Uncle Wiggily started off after the yeast cake and anything else he might find. At first he went along slowly, and then he hurried along a little faster, and pretty soon, as he came to a beautiful white lily, he heard a voice sadly saying:

“Oh, dear! What shall I do? I cannot fly after honey, and I shall surely die! Oh, woe is me!”

“Ha! Some one in trouble, I imagine!” Uncle Wiggily cried, as he looked all about. But he could see no one. Still he again heard the voice saying:

“Oh, how I suffer! If only some one would help me!”

“I will help you,” said Uncle Wiggily, “only I cannot see you. Where are you, if you please?”

“Look in the lily!” went on the sad voice, and, looking, Uncle Wiggily saw within the flower, which was like a little house, a poor butterfly, with a broken wing.

“Ah, that is too bad! How did it happen?” asked the rabbit gentleman kindly.

“I was caught in a hail storm yesterday,” said the butterfly, “and the hail stones broke one of my wings. I managed to flutter to my home in the lily, but I cannot go out now, as my wing is too sore. And, if I do not fly around among the flowers and suck out the honey, on which I live, I shall surely die.”

“Ha! No, indeed, you will not!” Uncle Wiggily cried. “I will not let you die. I will help you. See, I am going now for Dr. Possum, the animal gentleman who helps us woodland creatures, and mends broken wings and legs and everything like that. He will fix your wing for you, and then as to honey and flowers—well, I can fix that, too. Just don’t worry any more.”

“Oh, how good you are!” sighed the poor butterfly.

So Uncle Wiggily hurried after Dr. Possum and brought him to the lily house, and then while the butterfly’s broken wing was being mended, with rose leaves and marshmallow candy, Uncle Wiggily went to some kind bees whom he knew, and said:

“Now, dear buzzing bees, a friend of mine—a butterfly—has broken her wing. She cannot go fluttering around the flowers, sipping honey. So, until her wing is better, will you not, every day, carry her a little honey to her home in the white lily?”

“Of course we will!” cried the queen bee. “Gladly will we do that. Why, my goodness gracious me sakes alive and some apple blossoms! I should say we would do a kindness like that! Wouldn’t we, bees?”

“Buzz! Buzz!” said all the other bees. “Yes! Yes!”

“Then everything will be all right,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Thank you!”

He hurried back to the butterfly, whose wing Dr. Possum had fixed by this time, and the rabbit gentleman told the poor creature in the lily how he had arranged for the bees to bring her honey every day until her wing was healed.

“Oh, you are so good!” she murmured, as she went to sleep.

“Pray do not mention it,” said Uncle Wiggily, politely, and then he hurried to the store for the yeast cake.

Now comes a little sad part to this story, but I will not make it any longer than I can possibly help.

About a week after this, Nurse Jane heard Uncle Wiggily groaning in his bed, and saying:

“Oh, dear! How ill I am. It’s that old rheumatism pain again! Please send for Dr. Possum.”

“I will,” said the muskrat lady. And when Dr. Possum came he said:

“Uncle Wiggily, you are very ill indeed. You have rheumatism fever, and you must take bitter medicine, and, since the weather is so warm, you must have some one fan you every day with a fan to cool you.”

“But who can do it?” asked the rabbit gentleman. “Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, my muskrat housekeeper, is too busy, all my animal children friends have to go to school, so they can graduate, and all my other friends are too busy. No one can come to fan me.”

“What about the electric fan on your airship?” asked Nurse Jane.

“Alas! that is broken,” said Uncle Wiggily, and he felt very ill indeed. He needed fanning then and there.

“I don’t know what to do,” spoke Dr. Possum. “I would stay and fan you myself, but I have to call on the sick animals. I don’t know who can fan you.”

“Oh, please let me!” cried a voice at the window, and in flew the butterfly, whose broken wing was all well now. “I was coming over to thank Uncle Wiggily,” she said, “and I heard what you said. I would just love to perch on his pillow and fan him with my wings.”

“The very thing!” cried Dr. Possum. So the butterfly lady perched herself on Uncle Wiggily’s pillow, and with her beautiful wings fluttering up and down, she fanned him, making a lovely cool breeze, so that he soon fell asleep. And with the gentle fanning, and because of Dr. Possum’s medicine, the rabbit gentleman was soon all well again.

So that shows you should always help a butterfly when you can, as you never can tell when a butterfly might help you.

And that’s all I can tell you to-night, but on the next page, if the garden rake doesn’t jump over the fence and play tag with the rose bush and get all scratched, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the sawdust.

STORY XVII

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE SAWDUST

“You’re off again, I see,” spoke Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, one day, to Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, for whom she kept house.

“Yes, I thought I would go out for a little ride,” answered Mr. Longears, as he blew some heated air into the toy circus balloons of his airship. “It is a lovely day, and perhaps I may meet with an adventure; who knows?”

“True enough, who knows?” agreed Nurse Jane. “Well, I hope if you do have an adventure it will be a pleasant one.”

An adventure, you know, children, is something that happens to you, like falling down stairs. That’s an unpleasant adventure. Finding a penny rolling up hill is a pleasant adventure. That’s the difference, you see.

So Uncle Wiggily started off in his airship, which was made from one of Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy’s old clothes baskets, some toy circus balloons, a Japanese umbrella and an electric fan.

The old gentleman rabbit had not ridden so very far, sailing above the tree tops, as he was, before, all of a sudden, he heard a sad little voice crying:

“Oh, dear! Oh, isn’t that too bad? Oh, my poor Cora Ann Multiplicationtable!”

“Ha! Some one in trouble!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, looking down. “I must see if I cannot help them.”

Then he saw Susie Littletail, the rabbit girl, sitting on a stump, and looking at something in her paws.

“It must be her doll,” thought Uncle Wiggily “For the doll’s name is Cora Ann Multiplicationtable. I’ll go down and see what is the trouble.”

Down he went, and he found poor Susie crying sadly.

“What has happened?” asked Uncle Wiggily, kindly.

“Oh, all the sawdust stuffing has run out of my doll,” said the little rabbit girl. “I was carrying her out to get the air, for she has been ill, and all of a sudden, one of her legs caught in a thorn bush, ripping a hole in the cloth. Out ran the sawdust before I could stop it. Look!” And Poor Susie held up Cora Ann Multiplicationtable. The doll was as limp and slimpsy as a sheet of blotting paper after it has fallen into the ink well.

“Oh, that is too bad,” said Uncle Wiggily, “but perhaps I can help you. I’ll try.”

“Can you make her well again?” asked Susie, hopefully.

“Why, yes, I think so,” answered the rabbit gentleman. “I will get some more sawdust, and stuff her with it.”

“Oh, joy!” cried Susie, clapping her paws. “Then I will be happy again, for I love my doll Cora Ann Multiplicationtable very much. I hope you can cure her.”

“Well, I’ll go get the sawdust and try,” said Uncle Wiggily.

Into his airship he jumped, and up above the tree tops he went, to sail about, looking for sawdust. He peered all around, Uncle Wiggily did, but he saw no sawdust. Sawdust, you know, is little, fine grains of wood, made when the carpenter saws a board in two pieces to mend the fence.

“Well, I guess I can’t find any sawdust up here,” said the rabbit gentleman, “after a while I’ll have to go down to the earth again.”

Down he went, and, though he looked all over, he could find no sawdust. He thought perhaps he might meet a wagon-load of it, going to the butcher shop, for butchers put sawdust on their store floors instead of carpet. But no wagon-loads of sawdust were to be seen.

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “No sawdust down here, and none up in the air. I wonder where I can find any for Susie’s doll? I know, I’ll take a little trip down to the seashore in my airship. If I can’t find any sawdust there, perhaps I can bring back some seashore sand with which to stuff Susie’s doll. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.”

Up above the tree tops the rabbit gentleman went again in his airship, and soon he was at the seashore.

Up and down the beach he hopped, looking for sawdust, but he could see none. If there had ever been any the wind must have blown it away long ago.

“Oh, dear!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “This is too bad! I guess I’ll have to take back the sand after all.”

“Why, what is the trouble, if I may ask?” inquired a voice out in the salty sea waves, and Uncle Wiggily looked and saw the queerest fish he had ever beheld. It had a very long nose, and sticking out on either side of this nose were sharp teeth. But Uncle Wiggily was not frightened.

“What is the trouble?” the fish asked again.

“Why, I want some sawdust for Susie’s doll, Cora Ann Multiplicationtable,” answered the rabbit gentleman, “but I can find none.”

“Ha! Say no more!” cried the queer fish very politely. “Sawdust! I will give you all the sawdust you want. Just wait a minute.”

“Ha! How can you give me sawdust, if I may be so bold as to ask?” cried Uncle Wiggily.

“Why, I am a sawfish,” was the reply. “I can saw sawdust.” Then the fish gave a flop of his tail and out on the beach he jumped. He soon found a big log that had been washed up by the waves, and then, with his long nose covered with teeth, which were just like those of a saw, the fish sawed back and forth on the log with his nose, and made a lot of sawdust for Uncle Wiggily.

The rabbit gentleman caught the sawdust in his tall silk hat, and then thanking the sawfish, who jumped back into the ocean to wash his face, Uncle Wiggily hurried off in his airship to take the sawdust to Susie for her doll.

“Oh, how kind you are!” cried the little rabbit girl.

“Pray do not mention it,” politely said Uncle Wiggily, as he helped stuff the sawdust into Cora Ann Multiplicationtable. Soon she was as plump and fat as ever. So you see a sawfish is of some use in this world, after all.

And on the page after this, if the little dog’s collar doesn’t go to the laundry and get all wet in the bluing water, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the dusty carpet.

STORY XVIII

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE DUSTY CARPET

“Be careful, please! Look out! Kindly wipe your feet!” cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, as Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, was going into his hollow stump bungalow one day, after he had been out riding in his airship.

“Why, what is the matter?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “Don’t I always wipe my feet, Nurse Jane?” and this time the rabbit gentleman was very particular to give them an extra polish, or two, on the door-mat before entering.

“Oh, yes! as a rule you are very good that way,” said Nurse Jane politely, as she looked at her tail to see if Sammie Littletail, the boy rabbit, had tied any knots in it for a joke. But he had not, I am glad to say.

“Yes, as a rule, you are very careful,” went on Nurse Jane, “but you see I am house cleaning, and I have just scrubbed the floors, and so I don’t want a speck of dirt on them.”

“Ah, ha! I see! House cleaning!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “Well, I suppose it has to be done once in a while, but I do not like it at all. I think I will go to my room and read, and when supper is ready, call me, please.”

“I will,” promised Nurse Jane, and then she went on looking for moth-millers, which eat up your clothes, and she hunted for dust in all the corners, Nurse Jane did, and she swept and cleaned, and she had a great old time, she did!

“My, this is awful!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, as he went inside the hollow stump bungalow. “Why, there is hardly room to move!”

And well might he say so, for the chairs and tables were all scattered about, the carpets and rugs were piled in the middle of the floor, and the whole place seemed very much upset, indeed.

“Well, I suppose it’s always this way when house cleaning has to be done,” thought Uncle Wiggily, with a sigh. “I must put up with it.”

Then he stumbled over a stool, tripped on a chair, fell over a roll of carpet, and finally he reached his room, and sat down to read a book about how to make yellow carrots turn pink by coloring them with Easter eggs.

By and by after a while, Uncle Wiggily began to feel hungry.

“I wish I had something to eat,” he said, looking in the book at a large picture of a red, white and blue turnip, with a pink ribbon tied on it. “I wonder if supper is not nearly ready?”

Uncle Wiggily went to the door of his room and listened. He wanted to see if he could hear, down in the kitchen, the rattle of dishes and the clatter of the knives and forks. That would show Nurse Jane was setting the table, and when she set the table it was, nearly always, meal time.

But Uncle Wiggily could hear nothing but the moving and scraping of chairs about on the floor, and the flip-flop of the dusting cloth as Nurse Jane snapped it here and there, knocking the dust off the furniture upon the carpet, so she could not see it so plainly.

“Ha! Hum!” murmured Uncle Wiggily. “That doesn’t sound much like supper. I shall have to wait a bit longer.”

So he waited and waited, but there came no welcome sound of the rattle of dishes, nor the clatter of knives and forks. Nor was there any nice smell of ice cream frying on the stove, nor of peanuts boiling in the tea kettle. Nothing like supper at all.

“Well, this is very strange!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, as he got up from his chair about the forty-’leventh time to listen if supper were ready. “Something must have happened to Nurse Jane. I’ll go look,” he said.

Putting aside his book, down stairs the rabbit gentleman went, and he saw the muskrat lady in the yard, stretching a dusty carpet out on the green grass.

“Ahem! Pray pardon and excuse me, Nurse Jane,” said Uncle Wiggily, “but may I ask when tea will be ready?” You see he said tea to be more polite like.

“Tea!” exclaimed Nurse Jane. “Why, I can not give you your supper, Wiggy, until I have beaten all the dust out of this dusty carpet. And it will take me some time, Wiggy.” You see she called him Wiggy for short, because she was very busy at house cleaning.

“No supper until that carpet is beaten?” cried Uncle Wiggily, sad and disappointed like.

“No, indeed,” answered Nurse Jane. Then, with her long tail, which was like a carpet beater stick, the muskrat lady began to whip the dust out of the dusty carpet to make it clean.

“Oh, my! That is going to take a long time!” thought the rabbit gentleman. “I shall be very hungry indeed before I get any supper this evening, if I can’t get it until that carpet is beaten.”

So he waited and waited, and Nurse Jane kept on beating the dusty carpet with her long tail, and Uncle Wiggily was getting more and more hungry, when, all of a sudden, he heard some voices shouting:

“That’s the way to run! Throw the ball! Slide to home base! Put him out! Over the fence! Hurray! A home run!”

“Ha! Animal boys playing ball!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I have an idea! I’ll give them five cents each, and get them to beat the dusty carpet with the baseball bats! Then Nurse Jane will not have to do it and can get supper for me!”

Out he went to the vacant lot where the animal boys were playing ball. Charlie, the chicken chap, was at the bat.

“Boys, will you beat a dusty carpet for Nurse Jane?” asked Uncle Wiggily. “I would do it myself, only my rheumatism is so bad that I can’t!”

“Surely, we will beat it!” cried Jimmie Wibblewobble, the duck. So the animal boys soon beat the dusty carpet with their baseball bats, and Uncle Wiggily gave them five cents each for ice cream cones.

And, shortly after that, Nurse Jane made ready the rabbit gentleman’s supper, and everybody was happy, and when the carpet was no longer dusty, house cleaning time was over, and Uncle Wiggily could live in peace and quietness and he was glad.

And that’s the end of this story, but if the ivy vine doesn’t climb up in my window and pull the clothes off the rubber doll’s bed I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the little lamb.

STORY XIX

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE LITTLE LAMB

Uncle Wiggily, the old gentleman rabbit, was out in the yard of his hollow stump bungalow one morning, putting a new hair ribbon on his airship, so that it might flutter in the wind and look pretty. All of a sudden Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the nice muskrat lady housekeeper, called to him.

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily, would you mind going to the store for me?” she asked.

“Not at all,” answered the rabbit gentleman politely. “What is it you wish?” And he took off his tall silk hat and bowed.

“I need a loaf of bread, some sugar and a bottle of milk,” answered the muskrat lady.

“Say no more!” Uncle Wiggily exclaimed, with another polite bow. “You shall have them at once. I will go to the store right away in my airship.”

“Here is the money,” went on Nurse Jane. “Be careful not to lose it.”

“I’ll try,” answered Uncle Wiggily with a laugh.

Off he started for the store, sailing above the tops of the trees in his airship, which was made from one of Nurse Jane’s old clothes baskets, some toy circus balloons to lift it in the air, a Japanese umbrella to keep off the rain, and an electric fan, that went around whizzie-izzie. The electric fan pushed the airship along through the air, you see.

Well, Uncle Wiggily had not gone very far before, all of a sudden, something happened to his airship. The electric fan became all twisted up in the balloons, and the sofa cushions, which were in the clothes basket, to make a soft place for Uncle Wiggily to fall out on, in case of accidents—these sofa cushions began turning somersaults, and the first thing the rabbit gentleman knew he himself, was falling down.

Down and down he went, faster and faster. The sofa cushions toppled out of the basket, by themselves, and Uncle Wiggily said:

“Well, I think I myself am to be bumped very hard this time!”

But he was not. Just then, down below on the ground, there came along a wagon with a lot of sheep’s fleeces in it. Sheep’s fleeces are wool, you know. Men cut the wool, or the long, fluffy hair, off the backs of sheep, and it is woven into cloth and made into clothes. It does not hurt the sheep to cut off the wool, any more than it hurts to cut your hair.

So Uncle Wiggily fell out of his airship on top of this load of wool, which was not yet woven into cloth, and he was not hurt a bit, for he bounced up and down (like the circus man in the net) on the fluffy wool.

“Ha! That was very kind of you to come along just when you did to catch me as I fell,” said Uncle Wiggily to the man who drove the wool wagon.

“Oh, do not thank me,” spoke the man. “Thank those sheep over there. The wool was sheared off their backs, and when the nicest sheep lady of them all saw you falling just now she told me to drive over here quickly as I could so that I might be ready for you to fall on.”

“Ah, then it is you I have to thank,” said Uncle Wiggily to the sheep, with a low, polite bow. “You have done me a great favor. Perhaps, some day, I may be able to do you one.”

“Pray do not mention it,” said the sheep, also politely.

Then Uncle Wiggily mended his airship, sailed on to the store in it, and bought the things Nurse Jane wanted. On his way home, as he was flying over a green field, he heard a sad voice down below crying:

“Oh, my little lamb is lost! Oh, where can he be! Oh, isn’t this too bad!”

“Ha! That is my friend, the sheep lady, on whose wool I fell,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Now is my chance to do her a favor.”

Down he went in his airship, and he asked:

“What has happened, Mrs. Sheep? You seem to be in trouble.”

“I am in trouble,” sadly answered the mamma sheep. “My little lamb baby has strayed away, and is lost, I fear. Oh, I am so sorry!”

“Never fear!” said Uncle Wiggily, bravely. “I will go look for your little lost lamb in my airship. You were kind to me, and I am only too glad to be kind to you.”

“That is very good of you,” said the mamma sheep.