Read Ebook: Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters by Garis Howard Roger Bloomfield Edward Illustrator Campbell Lang Illustrator

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Ebook has 842 lines and 27857 words, and 17 pages

"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 was frozen, and you thawed it on the warm pie, that perhaps you will now help her. She is in trouble."

"In trouble, eh?" exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, sort of smoothing down his vest, fastidious like and stylish. "I didn't know she blew a horn."

"She doesn't," said Nurse Jane. "But I'll bring her in and she can tell you, herself, what she wants."

"Oh, Uncle Wiggily!" cried Mother Goose, as she set her broom down in one corner, for she never went out unless she carried it with her. She said she never could tell when she might have to sweep the cobwebs out of the sky. "Oh, Uncle Wiggily, I am in such a lot of trouble!"

"Well, I will be very glad to help you if I can," said the bunny uncle. "What is it?"

"It's about Higgledee Piggledee," answered Mother Goose.

"She's my black hen," went on Mother Goose. "You know how the verse goes in the book about me and my friends."

And, taking off her tall peaked hat, which she wore when she rode on the back of the old gander, Mother Goose sang:

"Higgledee Piggledee, my black hen, She lays eggs for gentlemen. Sometimes nine and sometimes ten. Higgledee Piggledee, my black hen. Gentlemen come every day, To see what my black hen doth lay."

"Well," asked Uncle Wiggily, "what is the trouble? Has Higgledee Piggledee stopped laying? If she has I am afraid I can't help you, for hens don't lay many eggs in winter, you know."

"Oh, it isn't that!" said Mother Goose, quickly. "Higgledee Piggledee lays as many eggs as ever for gentlemen--sometimes nine and sometimes ten. But the trouble is the gentlemen don't get them."

"Don't they come for them?" asked Uncle Wiggily, sort of puzzled like and wondering.

"Oh, yes, they come every day," said Mother Goose, "but there are no eggs for them. Some one else is getting the eggs Higgledee Piggledee lays."

"Do you s'pose she eats them herself?" asked the old rabbit gentleman, in a whisper. "Hens sometimes do, you know."

"Not Higgledee Piggledee," quickly spoke Mother Goose. "She is too good to do that. She and I are both worried about the missing eggs, and as you have been so kind I thought perhaps you could help us."

"I'll try," Uncle Wiggily said.

"Then come right along to Higgledee Piggledee's coop," invited Mother Goose. "Maybe you can find out where her eggs go to. She lays them in her nest, comes off, once in a while, to get something to eat, but when she goes back to lay more eggs the first ones are gone."

Uncle Wiggily twinkled his nose, tied his ears in a hard knot, as he always did when he was thinking, and then, putting on his fur coat and taking his rheumatism crutch with him, he went out with Mother Goose.

Uncle Wiggily rode in his airship, made of a clothes-basket, with toy circus balloons on top, and Mother Goose rode on the back of a big gander, who was a brother to Grandfather Goosey Gander. Soon they were at the hen coop where Higgledee Piggledee lived.

"Oh, Uncle Wiggily, I am so glad you came!" cackled the black hen. "Did Mother Goose tell you about the egg trouble?"

"She did, Higgledee Piggledee, and I will see if I can stop it. Now, you go on the nest and lay some eggs and then we will see what happens," spoke Uncle Wiggily.

So Higgledee Piggledee, the black hen, laid some eggs for gentlemen, and then she went out in the yard to get some corn to eat, just as she always did. And, while she was gone, Uncle Wiggily hid himself in some straw in the hen coop. Pretty soon the old gentleman heard a gnawing, rustling sound and up out of a hole in the ground popped two big rats, with red eyes.

"Did Higgledee Piggledee lay any eggs today?" asked one rat, in a whisper.

"Yes," spoke the other, "she did."

"Then we will take them," said the first rat. "Hurray! More eggs for us! No gentlemen will get these eggs because we'll take them ourselves. Hurray!"

He got down on his back, with his paws sticking up in the air. Then the other rat rolled one of the black hen's eggs over so the first rat could hold it in among his four legs. Next, the second rat took hold of the first rat's tail and began pulling him along, egg and all, just as if he were a sled on a slippery hill, the rat sliding on his back over the smooth straw. And the eggs rode on the rat-sled as nicely as you please.

"Ha!" cried Uncle Wiggily, jumping suddenly out of his hiding-place. "So this is where Higgledee Piggledee's eggs have been going, eh? You rats have been taking them. Scatt! Shoo! Boo! Skedaddle! Scoot!"

And the rats were so scared that they skedaddled away and shooed themselves and did everything else Mr. Longears told them to do, and they took no eggs that day. Then Uncle Wiggily showed Mother Goose the rat hole, and it was stopped up with stones so the rats could not come in the coop again. And ever after that Higgledee Piggledee, the black hen, could lay eggs for gentlemen, sometimes nine and sometimes ten, and there was no more trouble as there had been before Uncle Wiggily caught the rats and made them skedaddle.

So Mother Goose and the black hen thanked Uncle Wiggily very much. And if the stylish lady who lives next door doesn't take our feather bed to wear on her hat when she goes to the moving pictures, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Little Bo Peep.

UNCLE WIGGILY AND LITTLE BO PEEP

"What are you going to do, Nurse Jane?" asked Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, as he saw the muskrat lady housekeeper going out in the kitchen one morning, with an apron on, and a dab of white flour on the end of her nose.

"I am going to make a chocolate cake with carrot icing on top," replied Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy.

"Oh, good!" cried Uncle Wiggily, and almost before he knew it he started to clap his paws, just as Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbit children, might have done, and as they often did do when they were pleased about anything. "I just love chocolate cake!" cried the bunny uncle, who was almost like a boy-bunny himself.

"Do you?" asked Nurse Jane. "Then I am glad I am going to make one," and, going into the kitchen of the hollow-stump bungalow, she began rattling away among the pots, pans and kettles.

For now Nurse Jane and Uncle Wiggily were living together once more in their own hollow-stump bungalow. It had burned down, you remember, but Uncle Wiggily had had it built up again, and now he did not have to visit around among his animal friends, though he still called on them every now and then.

"Oh, dear!" suddenly cried Nurse Jane from the kitchen. "Oh, dear!"

"What is the matter, Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy?" asked the bunny uncle. "Did you drop a pan on your paw?"

"No, Uncle Wiggily," answered the muskrat lady. "It is worse than that. I can't make the chocolate cake after all, I am sorry to say."

"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."

"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."

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