Part 10

"Well, no, maybe not first along," Uncle Wiggily agreed. "But nearly all boys, especially the kind that go camping, are fond of animals, and will not hurt them. We will see what sort of boys these are, Baby Bunty."

So the bunny gentleman and the little rabbit girl hid behind the bushes and watched the camping boys, for that is what they were. They had come to spend a few weeks in the woods, living in a white tent which, at first, Baby Bunty thought was a snow house.

The boys had just come to camp, and the tent had been up only a little while. But already the lads had started a campfire; and they had hung a Gypsy kettle over the blaze, and were cooking soup.

"Get some more water, somebody!" called one boy.

"And I'm not going to cut any more wood!" exclaimed another. "I've been cutting wood ever since we got here!"

"We'll take turns!" spoke a third boy.

"Look out! That soup's boiling over!" shouted a fourth.

"They're regular boys all right!" chuckled Uncle Wiggily, as he crouched under a bush with Baby Bunty. "They're so excited at coming to camp they hardly know what they're doing."

Uncle Wiggily and Baby Bunty could hear and understand what the boys said, though they themselves could not speak to the camping chaps. For a time the two rabbits watched the little lads, who were trying to get a meal. They made many mistakes, of course, such as getting the salt mixed up with the sugar, and they left the bread out of its tin box so it dried, for they had never been camping before.

"But they'll soon learn," said Uncle Wiggily.

"I hope they won't chase us, and throw stones at us," Baby Bunty remarked, as she and Mr. Longears hopped away.

"I think they are good boys," spoke the bunny gentleman.

And the camping boys were. When they had finished eating they scattered crumbs so the birds could pick them up. Larger pieces of left-over food were placed on a flat stump where the squirrels and chipmunks could get them.

Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the two boy squirrels, saw some of this food as they were coming through the woods. The camping boys were away just then, so the squirrel chaps had no fear of going close to the white tent-house. Johnnie found a piece of bread and butter, and Billie picked up half a ginger snap.

"That shows the camping boys are kind to animals," said Uncle Wiggily, when Johnnie and Billie told him what they had found. "I hope I may get a chance to do these lads a favor."

And Uncle Wiggily had this chance sooner than he expected.

For about a week the weather was most lovely for camping. The sun shone every day, the wind blew just enough to send the sailboat spinning about the lake and there wasn't a drop of rain.

It is rain which soaks most of the fun out of camping, just as rain takes away your fun at home. And these boys, never having camped in a tent before, gave no thought to storms.

One afternoon it began to rain. Uncle Wiggily, in his hollow stump bungalow, where he was reading the cabbage-leaf paper, heard the pitter-patter of the drops on the window, and looked up.

"Where is Baby Bunty, Nurse Jane?" asked the bunny gentleman.

"Why, she hasn't come back from the store yet," answered the muskrat lady housekeeper.

"Did she take an umbrella?" asked Uncle Wiggily.

"No," replied Nurse Jane, "she did not."

"Then she'll get soaking wet!" exclaimed Mr. Longears. "I'll go after her with a toadstool."

You know in Woodland, near the Orange Ice Mountain, where Uncle Wiggily lived, toadstools were often used for umbrellas. Of course, some of the animal folk had regular umbrellas, but when they were in a hurry they could break off a big toadstool, or mushroom, and use that.

So Uncle Wiggily hopped out of his hollow stump bungalow, and, growing near his front gate, he found a big toadstool. Picking this, he held it over his head and hurried along through the rain to meet Baby Bunty, who had gone to the three and five cent store for Nurse Jane.

Uncle Wiggily had to hop almost to the place where the tent of the camping boys stood before he met the little rabbit girl, half drenched.

"Oh, Uncle Wiggily! You ought to see!" cried Baby Bunty. "There is so much water around the tent that those nice boys will be washed away, I guess!"

"Water around their tent?" repeated the bunny gentleman. "You don't say so!"

"Yes," said Baby Bunty. "The rain is coming down so hard that it is running like a little brook around the tent. The boys are inside, and I heard them saying that the water would soon come up over the cots and they wouldn't have any dry place to sleep to-night!"

"Silly boys!" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, holding the toadstool umbrella over Baby Bunty. "They didn't know enough to dig a ditch around the outside of their tent to let the rain water run off. All campers do that, but as this is the first time these boys came to the woods I suppose they didn't know about it. Always dig a ditch, or trench, in the earth around your tent when you go camping, Baby Bunty."

"I will," promised the little rabbit girl, real serious like.

"But that isn't going to help the boys now," went on Uncle Wiggily. "I think I shall have to take a paw in this. They are good boys, and are kind to animals. I must do them a favor."

"But how can you?" asked Baby Bunty.

"Why, I, being a rabbit, am one of the best diggers in the world," went on Mr. Longears. "Still, I will need help to dig a ditch around the tent, as it is rather large. Hop home, Baby Bunty, and tell Sammie Littletail, Toodle and Noodle Flat-Tail, the beaver boys, and Grandpa Whackum, the old beaver gentleman, to please come here. With their help I can dig the ditch."

So Baby Bunty, taking the toadstool umbrella, hopped away, and Uncle Wiggily, to await her return, hid under a thick-branched pine tree which kept off most of the rain. The drops pelted down, and around the tent of the camping boys was almost a flood. Night was coming on, too, and before morning the water would rise up so high that it would wet the feet of the boys in their beds.

Pretty soon, just about dusk, when it was still raining hard, along came Sammie Littletail, the rabbit boy, Toodle and Noodle the beavers, with their broad, flat tails, and Grandpa Whackum, the oldest beaver of them all. Beavers just love to work in the water and they can dig dirt canals better than most boys.

"Lively now, my friends!" called Uncle Wiggily, coming out from under the pine tree. "We'll dig a ditch around the tent for the kind boys. They won't see us, as they are inside, and probably will not come out in the train."

So Uncle Wiggily, Sammie and the beavers began work. Quickly and silently they dug and dug and dug in the soft earth, piling the dirt to one side, and making a trench so that the rain water could run off into the brook. And soon the little pond that had formed around the tent of the camping boys had drained away.

"Now they will have no more trouble," said Uncle Wiggily as he and his friends, all wet and muddy, finished the trench. "We can go home."

Home they went, through the rain, to get something to eat and dry out. And in the morning, though it still rained, no water rose inside the boys' tent. And none came through the roof, for that was like an umbrella, the canvas cloth being stretched over the ridge-pole.

"Oh, look!" cried one boy, coming to the flap of the tent, as the front of the canvas house is called. "Someone has dug a ditch around our camp, and now we'll keep dry!"

"Why, it's a regular little canal!" exclaimed a second boy. "It wasn't there yesterday!"

"Who did it?" asked the other lads.

But none of them knew, and I hope you will not tell them, for I want to keep it a secret.

And when the rain stopped, the ground around the tent dried out very quickly because the proper ditch had been dug around it. And the camping boys put out on the flat stump many good things for the animal folk to eat. And the next time those boys went camping they knew enough to make a trench around their tent.

Now let me see; what shall we have next? Well, I think I shall tell you the story of Uncle Wiggily and the birthday cake--that is, I will if the snow-shovel doesn't make the coal-scuttle sneeze when they are playing tag down under the cellar steps.

STORY XXVI

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE BIRTHDAY CAKE

"To-morrow is my birthday! To-morrow is my birthday! And I'm going to have a cake with ten candles on!"

A little girl sang this over and over as she danced around the house one morning.

"Ten candles! And they'll be lighted, and I can blow them out and cut the cake and pass it around; can't I, Mother?" asked the little girl.

"Yes, my dear," Mother answered. "But if you are going to have a birthday cake you must go to the store and get me some flour, sugar and eggs. I did not know I needed them, but I do, if you are to have a cake."

"Oh, of course I want a cake!" said the little girl. "It wouldn't be at all like a birthday without a cake! And ten candles on top, all lighted! Last year I only had nine candles. But now I can have ten! Ten candles! Ten candles on my birthday cake!" sang the happy little girl again and again. "Ten candles! Ten candles!"

"You had better go to the store, instead of singing so much!" laughed her mother. "Sing on your way, if you like. But don't forget the flour, sugar and eggs."

"I'll get them," said the little girl, and off she started, taking a short cut through the woods to reach the store more quickly.

These woods were the same ones in which Uncle Wiggily had built his hollow stump bungalow, and about the same time the little girl started off to get the things for her birthday cake the bunny rabbit gentleman stood on his front porch.

"Where are you going?" asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, his muskrat lady housekeeper.

"Oh, just to hop through the forest, to look for an adventure," answered Mr. Longears. "I haven't had one since I helped dig the rain-trench about the tent of the camping boys."

"I should think that would be enough to last a long time," spoke Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy.

"Oh, no. I need a new adventure every day!" laughed the bunny, and over the fields and through the woods he hopped.

Now Uncle Wiggily had not gone very far before, all of a sudden, he stepped into a trap. It was a spring trap, set in the woods by some hunter who had covered it with dried leaves so it could not easily be seen. That's the way hunters fool the wild animals.

And, not seeing the trap, Uncle Wiggily hopped right into it.

"Snap!" went the jaws of the trap together, catching the poor bunny gentleman fast by one hind leg.

"Oh, my!" cried Mr. Longears. "I'm caught! But it is fortunate that it is a smooth-jawed trap, and not the kind with sharp teeth. If I could only get my leg loose I'd be all right; except that my paw might be lame and stiff for a few days. I must try to get out!"

Uncle Wiggily tried to pull his paw from the trap, but it was of no use. The spring held the jaws too tightly together. The bunny gentleman twinkled his pink nose as hard as he could, and he even tried to pry apart the trap jaws with his red, white and blue striped rheumatism crutch. But he couldn't.

"Oh, dear!" though Uncle Wiggily. "I must call for help. Perhaps Neddie Stubtail, the strong boy bear, will hear me. He could easily spring open this trap and set me free."

So the bunny gentleman called as loudly as he could:

"Help! Help!"

Of course he talked animal talk, and for this reason the little girl, who was going to have a birthday cake, with ten candles on it, did not know what Uncle Wiggily was saying. She heard him making a noise, though, for she passed the place where the bunny was caught in the trap, soon after the accident happened.

"I wonder what that funny noise is?" said the little girl, as Uncle Wiggily again called for help. "It sounds like some animal. I wish I understood animal talk!"

Uncle Wiggily wished, with all his heart, that the little girl could hear what he was saying, for he was calling for help. The bunny understood girl-talk, and he knew what this girl was saying, for she spoke her thoughts out loud.

"But she doesn't know what I want!" said poor Uncle Wiggily to himself. "She is sure to be good and kind, as all girls are, and if I could only get her to come over this way she might take me out of the trap."

The little girl, on her way home from the store, had come to a stop not far from Uncle Wiggily, but she could not see him because he was behind a bush.

"I must make some kind of a noise that she will hear," thought the bunny. Then he thrashed around in the bushes with his crutch, rattling the dried leaves and the green bushes, and the little girl heard this noise.

"Oh, maybe a bird is caught in a big cobweb!" said the little girl. "I'll get it loose--I love the birds!"

Putting down her bundle of flour, sugar and eggs on a flat stump, she made her way through the bushes until she saw where Uncle Wiggily was caught in the trap.

"Oh, what a funny rabbit!" cried the little girl as she looked at the bunny gentleman all dressed, as he always was when he went to look for an adventure. "He looks just like a picture on an Easter card!" laughed the little girl. "I wish I had him at my party!"

"Well, I wish she'd take this trap off my paw!" thought Uncle Wiggily, though of course he could say nothing, however much he could hear.

Then the little girl looked down among the leaves and saw where the trap pinched Uncle Wiggily.

"Oh, you poor bunny rabbit!" she cried. "I'll set you loose."

Very gently she pressed her foot on the spring of the trap, to open it. And when the jaws were opened Uncle Wiggily could lift out his paw, which he did. He hopped a little way over the dried leaves, limping a bit, for the pinching trap had pained him. Then, coming to a stop on a smooth, grassy place, the bunny leaned on his red, white and blue striped rheumatism crutch and, taking off his tall silk hat, he made a low and polite bow to the little girl.

"Thank you for having done me a great favor!" said Uncle Wiggily in animal talk. "I wish I could do one for you!"

But of course the little girl could not understand this bunny language, so she only laughed and said:

"Oh, what a dear, funny bunny! With a tall hat and everything! I wish you would come to my birthday party! I'm going to have a cake with ten lighted candles on!"

"Thank you, I'd like to come, but it is out of the question," answered Uncle Wiggily in his own talk. Then, with another low and polite bow, he hopped away.

The little girl picked up the things she had bought at the store and went home.

"You'll never guess what I saw in the woods," she told her mother. "A bunny rabbit, all dressed in a black coat and red trousers, was caught in a trap, and I set him free!"

"Nonsense!" laughed Mother. "Whoever heard of a rabbit like that? You are so excited about your birthday cake that you were dreaming, I think!"

"Oh, no, Mother! I didn't dream!" said the little girl. "Really I didn't!"

"Well, never mind. Now we'll make your birthday cake," answered Mother.

The birthday cake was mixed and baked in the oven, and on top was spread pink frosting.

"We'll put the candles on to-morrow, when you have your party," Mother told the little girl.

To-morrow came, after a night in which Cora Janet, which was the little girl's name, had dreamed about riding in an airship, with a bunny gentleman dressed up like a soldier. In the afternoon many boys and girls came to Cora Janet's birthday party.

"Oh, how lovely everything is!" exclaimed a little boy, when he was given his second dish of ice cream.

"Wait until you see my birthday cake with ten candles on!" whispered Cora Janet.

When it was almost time to bring on the lighted cake, Mother called Cora Janet out into the kitchen.

"Did you get the candles, Cora?" Mother asked.

"Why, no!" the little girl answered. "I--I thought we had candles!"

"And I thought I told you to get them," Mother went on. "There isn't one in the house! I've looked everywhere. Never mind, perhaps I can borrow some next door. Go back to your friends."

"Oh, I do hope you can get candles!" sighed Cora Janet. "A birthday cake without candles will hardly be right!"

Mother asked the lady who lived next door, on one side, if she had any candles.

"Not a one, I'm sorry to say," was the answer.

Then Mother asked the lady on the other side.

"Oh, I never use candles," this lady replied, coming out on her back stoop to talk over the fence to Cora Janet's mother. "I'm so sorry!"

"Well, I guess they'll have to eat the cake without any birthday candles on," said Mother. "Cora Janet will be so disappointed, too, as she is such an imaginative child! Just fancy, Mrs. Blake, she came home yesterday, and told about helping out of a trap an old rabbit gentleman, with a tall silk hat!"

"The idea! She must have dreamed it!" said Mrs. Blake.

"No, she didn't dream it! That really happened!" said Uncle Wiggily to himself, who was just then hopping through the fields back of the house where Cora Janet lived. "So this is her home, is it?" went on the bunny gentleman to himself. "And she hasn't any candles for her birthday cake! Too bad!"

Uncle Wiggily had hopped along just in time to hear Cora Janet's mother asking for candles of the neighbors.

"It's so late that all the stores are closed," went on Mrs. Blake, "or I'd go get some candles for Cora."

"Never mind," spoke Mother. "She will have to bear her disappointment as best she can."

"No! That must not be!" said Uncle Wiggily to himself. "I cannot give her real candles, but I can leave on her steps some slivers of the pine tree. They have in them pitch, tar and resin and will burn almost like candles. When I was a rabbit boy I often lighted these pine-tree candles."

Not far away were the woods, and, hopping across the field in the dusk of the evening, Uncle Wiggily, with his sharp teeth, soon gnawed off some pine-knot splinters from one of the trees. In olden times, when there were no electric or kerosene lamps, children used to study their lessons in front of the fireplaces, by these pine knots.

"These will do for birthday-cake candles," whispered Uncle Wiggily, as he hopped back to Cora Janet's house with a paw full of the pine knots. He put them on the stoop, and then, with his hind paws, he kicked some gravel from the front walk up against the dining-room windows.

"What's that?" asked Cora Janet, as she heard the noise.

"Some bad boys playing tick-tack," said one of the girls at the party. "They're playing tricks because they weren't asked."

"I'll see who it is," spoke Mother.

She went out on the porch. There she saw the pile of pine-knot slivers. Having lived in the country when she was a girl, Mother knew that these bits of wood could be used for candles.

"Oh, now I can make the birthday cake blaze most brightly!" exclaimed Mother. Into the house she hurried. She stuck ten pine-knot slivers on the cake, for Uncle Wiggily had left a full dozen, not knowing exactly how old Cora Janet was. Then, when the pine knots were lighted, Mother carried the cake into the room where the boys and girls were wishing Cora Janet many happy returns for her birthday.

"Oh, where did you get the candles?" asked Cora.

"I guess the rabbit you dreamed you saw must have left them," answered Mother, in fun, of course, for she never thought that really could happen.

"Dream-candles or not, they are lovely!" murmured the little girl.

And everyone at the party said the same thing.

They watched Cora Janet as, one by one, she blew out the pine candles on her birthday cake. And when the last one flickered away, the cake was cut amid the joyous laughter of the boys and girls.

"Well, I'm glad I could do her a favor," said the bunny rabbit to himself, as hidden under the lilac bush, he heard and saw all that went on. "I shall always love Cora Janet!"

And he did.

So if the needle doesn't wink its eye when it sits on the sewing-machine to read the paper of pins, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the New Year's horn.

STORY XXVII

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE NEW YEAR'S HORN

Christmas had come and gone, and the next holiday for the boys and girls who lived in the village outside of Uncle Wiggily's forest was to be New Year's Day. I call it Uncle Wiggily's forest for on one edge of it the bunny rabbit gentleman had built himself a hollow stump bungalow. There he lived with Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, his muskrat lady housekeeper.

On the farther side of the wood was the village where many real boys and girls had their homes. To them, as I say, Christmas had come and gone, bringing to most of them presents which they liked very much.

"I'm going to have a lot of fun on New Year's," said one boy to another as they were coasting on the hill the last day of the old year.

"What are you going to do?" asked the other boy.

"I'm going to blow the Old Year out and the New Year in," was the answer.

"Gracious me sakes alive!" thought Uncle Wiggily Longears, the bunny rabbit gentleman, who happened to be resting under a bush near where the boys were coasting down hill. "I hope he doesn't blow the Old Year so far away that the New Year will be afraid to come in," said Mr. Longears to himself. Then he listened again, for the boys were talking further.

"How you going to blow?" one lad wanted to know.

"With my Christmas horn," was the answer. "I got a dandy horn for Christmas. To-night is New Year's eve. My father said I could stay up late. At twelve o'clock the Old Year goes away and the New Year comes, and we're going to have a party at our house, and I'm going to blow my horn like anything!"

"So'm I," said several other boys.

"Where does the Old Year go when you blow it away?" asked a lad who had red hair and freckles.

"Oh, I don't know," answered the boy who had first talked of his Christmas horn. "It just goes--that's all! It disappears same as the hole in a doughnut when you eat it."

"You don't eat the _hole_!" declared another boy.

"Well, you eat all around it," was the answer, "and then there isn't any hole any more. It's the same with the Old Year. After twelve o'clock on December 31 there isn't any Old Year any more. It's January the first, and it's the New Year. I'm going to blow my horn loud! All the fellows are!"

"We will, too!" cried the rest of the boys.

But one lad, who had a clumsy, home-made sled on the hill, did not say he was going to blow the New Year in. He turned away as the other lads talked of their coming fun. Someone asked him:

"Are you going to watch the Old Year out, Jimmy?"

"No, I guess not," was the answer. "I'm going to sleep."

"The noise will wake you up," someone suggested.

"Well, then I'll go to sleep again," was the answer.

"I guess the reason Jimmy won't blow the Old Year out and the New Year in is because he hasn't any horn," said a boy with a fine new blue sled. "He didn't get hardly anything for Christmas."

"That's too bad!" softly spoke the lad who had first mentioned about blowing in the New Year. "Maybe I can find an old horn at my house, and I'll take it to him. If I could find two I'd take another to his sister. But I don't believe I can."

"Oh, won't we have fun, blowing the New Year in?" cried the boys, as they walked to the top of the hill so they might coast down. But Jimmy did not join in the joyous shout. He was a poor boy, and, as the others had said, he had not found much in his stocking at Christmas. Certainly there was no bright tooting horn!

"This is too bad!" thought Uncle Wiggily, as he hopped back to his hollow stump bungalow, after the coasting boys were out of the way so they would not see him. "I wonder how I could get a New Year's horn for that poor boy?"