Part 2

“See! There goes Baby Bunty’s doll!” said the muskrat lady. “It’s skidding along over the ground as fast as the skillery-scalery alligator can crawl. Baby Bunty’s doll is running away, and she’ll feel so badly!”

“Baby Bunty’s doll running away? Impossible!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “The doll isn’t alive—it can’t run away!”

“But it is!” said Nurse Jane. “See it skiddle along!”

And, as true as I’m telling you, there was Baby Bunty’s doll, moving along the woodland path, over the green moss, over the green grass, over the brown leaves in and out among the green ferns. The doll was sliding along the ground, but no one was dragging her or pulling her or pushing her—that is as far as Uncle Wiggily and Nurse Jane could see.

“Did you ever? Can you imagine it!” cried the muskrat lady.

“I can see it!” said the bunny, rubbing his eyes, and his pink, twinkling nose, to make sure he was awake.

“I can see it!” said Uncle Wiggily. “I don’t have to imagine it. But what makes that doll go I don’t know. Some dolls can walk and talk, but I never saw one slide along all by herself before.”

“Run after it, quickly!” cried Nurse Jane. “Baby Bunty will feel very badly if her doll is lost! Run after it for her!”

“I will,” said the rabbit gentleman. Not stopping to put on his tall, silk hat, and forgetting all about his red, white and blue striped rheumatism crutch, out of his hollow stump bungalow rushed Uncle Wiggily. After the doll he hopped.

But as fast as he hopped the doll skiddled along just as fast, always keeping ahead of Mr. Longears.

“Oh, ho! I’ll get you yet!” cried the bunny. And he hopped faster and faster. But the doll skiddled along even more quickly. Uncle Wiggily was hopping as he had never hopped before.

“What makes that doll skiddle along?” panted the bunny, all out of breath. “I cannot see any one pulling or pushing her. It can’t be a trick of the Pipsisewah or the Skuddlemagoon, for I can see neither of those bad chaps. What makes the doll move along? I must find out, but first I must get hold of it!”

So the bunny hopped along faster and faster, and the doll skiddled along until, all of a sudden, Baby Bunty’s play-toy caught on a twisted tree root, was held fast, and Uncle Wiggily, making a big jump, grabbed it. Then he saw that a thin, black but very strong thread was tied around the doll.

“Ha! Some one was pulling that doll along by this black string, and I couldn’t see it,” said the rabbit gentleman. “I wonder who did it?”

“I did!” cried a jolly voice, and out from behind a bush jumped Baby Bunty. “I tied the long thread to my doll, and then I hopped ahead and pulled the doll after me!” said Baby Bunty. “I wanted you to hop along fast, and not get stiff, Uncle Wiggily, and you did! Ho! Ho! Ha! Ha!”

Uncle Wiggily rubbed his pink nose. He shook his paw at Baby Bunty, but he couldn’t help laughing.

“I’m not stiff now,” he said, “but I may be tomorrow.”

“Oh, no you won’t!” laughed Baby Bunty! And if the bath tub doesn’t sprinkle paregoric perfume on the wash rag, thinking it’s a handkerchief, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Bunty’s medicine.

STORY VI UNCLE WIGGILY AND BUNTY’S MEDICINE

“Oh, Baby Bunty! Baby Bunty!” called Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, to the little rabbit girl, who had been found in a hollow stump by Uncle Wiggily Longears. “Ho, Baby Bunty! Come here, quickly!” called the muskrat lady housekeeper of the rabbit’s bungalow.

“Does Uncle Wiggily want to play tag with me, or hide-and-go-seek?” asked Baby Bunty, as she came running in from the front yard. She had been playing dolls with Susie Littletail, the big rabbit girl, and with Lulu and Alice Wibblewobble, the duck girls. “Does Uncle Wiggily want to chase me?” asked Baby Bunty.

“No, indeed!” answered Nurse Jane. “You are altogether too lively for Uncle Wiggily, I’m afraid. He is so stiff and lame, from having chased your doll yesterday, as you were pulling it along through the wood by a string—Uncle Wiggily is so lame from his fast hopping that you’ll have to go get Dr. Possum.”

“What for?” asked Baby Bunty, who was, indeed, a lively little rabbit girl, always wanting the bunny gentleman to play with her and chase her. She said it kept him lively. Well, it did to a certain extent. “Why does Unk Wig want Dr. Possum?” asked Baby Bunty, giving Mr. Longears one of his pet names.

“Because he is ill,” said Nurse Jane. “He is so lame and stiff that he just sits in an easy chair and grunts. Dr. Possum will come and give Uncle Wiggily some medicine and then he’ll be better.”

“All right! I’ll go!” said Baby Bunty, and pretty soon she came riding back with the animal doctor in his automobile.

“My! But you came quickly!” said Nurse Jane, as Dr. Possum stopped his car amid a shower of leaves, in front of Uncle Wiggily’s hollow stump bungalow.

“I just had to!” said Dr. Possum, getting out and curling his long tail around his satchel of pink, blue, red, yellow and skilligimink colored pills. “Baby Bunty said if I didn’t ride here as fast as I could make the auto go, maybe Uncle Wiggily would never get better.”

“Oh, I think it isn’t quite as bad as that,” said Nurse Jane. “Still Uncle Wiggily is very lame and stiff. He says he can’t move, from having hopped too lively yesterday.”

“Hum! Anybody would be lively where Baby Bunty was,” spoke Dr. Possum. “Now, I’ll have a look at my Uncle Wiggily friend.”

Well, Dr. Possum gave Mr. Longears red pills and pink pills and yellow pills and brown pills, but still, all that day, the rabbit gentleman sat in his chair and grunted and groaned and said he was so stiff he couldn’t move. Dr. Possum shook his head.

“I can’t understand it,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be much the matter with Uncle Wiggily, but yet he won’t get up and move about. Suppose you make him some sassafras tea,” he said to Nurse Jane.

“I will,” she promised. So Dr. Possum went away, and Nurse Jane went out in the woods to dig up some sassafras roots, and Baby Bunty was left home with Uncle Wiggily. The rabbit gentleman sat in his easy chair, with his eyes shut and his pink nose twinkled hardly any.

“How do you feel now?” asked Baby Bunty.

“Oh, perhaps if I read the paper I’d feel better,” said Mr. Longears.

Baby Bunty handed it to him.

“Now, if you’ll give me my glasses, my dear,” went on Uncle Wiggily, “I’ll sit here and read until Nurse Jane comes back.”

A queer look came over Baby Bunty’s face.

“Where are your glasses?” she asked.

“On the mantel,” said the rabbit gentleman. Baby Bunty looked.

“I don’t see them,” she answered.

“Oh, maybe they’re on the clock shelf,” spoke Mr. Longears.

“No, they aren’t there,” said Baby Bunty. “I guess you’ll have to get up and help me hunt for them, Uncle Wiggily.”

“Oh, dear! I suppose I must,” groaned the bunny. Slowly, and with much groaning, he got out of his chair. He looked in several places for his glasses so he could read. But he could not find them.

“Maybe they’re behind the piano,” said Baby Bunty. Uncle Wiggily looked there, but no glasses were to be found. “Maybe they’re over here under the couch!” cried Baby Bunty, hopping across the room. Uncle Wiggily followed her. The glasses were not there. “Maybe they’re out in the kitchen. Come on, run out there with me and look,” cried Baby Bunty.

Uncle Wiggily did. And then such a chase, all over the hollow stump bungalow, as Baby Bunty led Uncle Wiggily looking for his glasses! Up stairs and down stairs he hopped, getting more and more lively all the while.

Finally, when Uncle Wiggily was trying to jump up on top of the picture moulding, since Baby Bunty said his glasses might be there, in came Nurse Jane with the sassafras.

[Illustration: [Uncle Wiggily]]

“Why, Uncle Wiggily!” she cried. “What’s the matter? You must be all better by the lively way you hop about! What’s the matter?”

“I’m looking for my glasses, and Baby Bunty is helping me,” answered Mr. Longears.

“Why, how forgetful you are, Wiggily! There are your glasses, on top of your head, where you so often put them!” said Nurse Jane. “Didn’t you know they were there?”

“No,” said Mr. Longears, “I didn’t.”

“I did—all the while!” laughed Baby Bunty. “But I just wanted you to hop around lively and hunt for them. You aren’t stiff now, are you, Mr. Longears?” she asked, formal like.

“No,” said Uncle Wiggily, twinkling his pink nose, “I am not at all stiff! Yours was the best medicine, Baby Bunty!”

And if the mince pie doesn’t dream that it’s a trolley car and try to run a race with the rag doll’s automobile, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Bunty’s picnic.

STORY VII UNCLE WIGGILY AND BUNTY’S PICNIC

“What are you going to do today, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Baby Bunty, as she saw the rabbit gentleman sitting in the sun on a bench at the side of his hollow stump bungalow one morning.

“Oh! I’m going to take a little hop through the woods, and perhaps call on Grandfather Goosey Gander, to see if he is well again, after having had a cold in his bill,” spoke Mr. Longears.

“Oh, dear!” sighed Baby Bunty, the little rabbit girl, who was hidden in a hollow stump until Uncle Wiggily found her.

“What’s the matter?” asked the rabbit gentleman. “Didn’t I hop around enough to suit you when I was looking for my glasses and they were on top of my head all the while!”

“Oh! you hopped enough, and you cured your stiffness,” said Baby Bunty. “But if you are going to the woods,” said the little tot, “can’t you take me for a picnic? I haven’t had a picnic in ever so long.”

“Oh, ho! So you want a picnic!” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “Well, I guess we might have one. Tell Nurse Jane to make some carrot sandwiches, and some turnip flopovers, and a few lettuce ice cream cones, and we’ll go in the woods and have a picnic.”

“Oh, goodie! Oh, joy!” cried Baby Bunty, and she clapped her paws together and tried to make her teeny weeny pink nose twinkle as Uncle Wiggily made his. But, of course, it wasn’t the same.

In a little while Nurse Jane had put up a nice lunch in a birch bark basket, and Uncle Wiggily and Baby Bunty started to hop through the woods.

“Oh! there goes Billie Bushytail, the squirrel boy, and his brother Johnnie is with him,” suddenly called the baby rabbit after a while. “May they come to our picnic?”

“Surely,” answered Uncle Wiggily. And after that he and Baby Bunty saw Lulu, Jimmie and Alice Wibblewobble, the ducks, and Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow, the puppy dog boys, and Nannie and Billie Wagtail, the goats.

“Bring them all to our picnic!” invited Uncle Wiggily. “We have lunch enough for all.” So all the animal children went to Baby Bunty’s picnic.

Under a tree, on a carpet of green moss, with a fringe of ferns about it, and using toadstools for seats, the rabbit gentleman and Baby Bunty and their friends started the picnic. They had carrot sandwiches, lettuce cakes, turnip jump-arounds and cabbage cookies.

“This is a jolly picnic!” said everybody.

“I’m glad you like it,” spoke Baby Bunty.

And then, all of a sudden, Jackie Bow Wow gave a soft little bark, and said to Baby Bunty:

“Look! Uncle Wiggily is going to sleep. We can’t have any fun at this picnic if he goes to sleep! He ought to play games with us, make whistles from the willow tree and all things like that.”

“Yes,” said Baby Bunty, “so he ought. Oh, dear! I wish Uncle Wiggily wouldn’t go to sleep after he eats! But he almost always does, of late, even at home. I guess he is getting old and stiff.”

“Can’t you make him wake up and be more lively?” asked Lulu Wibblewobble, as she helped a little ant lady lift some carrot bread crumbs over a fallen leaf.

“I’ll try,” said Baby Bunty. “A picnic isn’t any fun unless you play games. And if Uncle Wiggily is going to sleep all the while we can’t play games with him. Now just watch me!”

Baby Bunty slipped up behind Uncle Wiggily, and, taking a long green fern leaf, she softly tickled the bunny rabbit on one of his ears.

“A-ker-choo! Goo-zeesium!” suddenly sneezed the bunny.

“Oh! He’s waking up!” quacked Jimmie the duck.

“Hush!” whispered Baby Bunty. Then she tickled the rabbit gentleman on his other ear.

“Wa-hoo! Zoop! Zing!” gargled Uncle Wiggily.

“Oh, he’s getting real excited like!” barked Peetie Bow Wow.

“Wait a minute!” begged Baby Bunty, keeping out of sight.

Then she took a soft piece of grass and she let it flicker gently over Uncle Wiggily’s pink nose, which never twinkled when he was asleep. All of a sudden the bunny rabbit gentleman cried:

“Oh zip! Doodle-de-oodle! Gurr! Wafty-zup!” And he sneezed and opened his eyes and sat up and said: “Is anything the matter?”

“Oh, no!” answered Baby Bunty sweetly. “We just want you to play some games with us; that’s all.”

“Play games! Of course I’ll play games. I always do at a picnic,” laughed the rabbit gentleman. “I declare! I must have been asleep!” he said. “And I dreamed that a ladybug tickled me!”

“Oh, no! Nothing like that! Can you imagine!” laughed Baby Bunty. And all the other animal children laughed, too. Then Uncle Wiggily played “Hop Over the Stump” and all such fashion games with them, and they had a fine time at the picnic. And if the pumpkin pie doesn’t take the chocolate cake out in the dark and lose it, so there aren’t any cookies for the goldfish, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Bunty’s bouquet.

STORY VIII UNCLE WIGGILY AND BUNTY’S BOUQUET

“Will you do me just a little favor, Uncle Wiggily?” asked Baby Bunty one day, as she came home from school, and saw the dear old rabbit gentleman sitting in the sun outside his hollow stump bungalow.

“Do you a favor? Why, of course, I will, Baby Bunty,” said Mr. Longears to the little rabbit girl he had found in the woods. “But I hope it is a favor that will not make me hop around. I am a bit stiff from having gone on the picnic with you yesterday. Though I had a good time, after all,” he said.

“I’m glad you did,” said Baby Bunty. “This favor is a very easy one. You can sit there and do it. All I want you to do is to tell me what kind of woodland flowers to pick for a bouquet for the lady mouse teacher in the hollow stump school.”

“Oh, ho!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “So your lady mouse teacher wants a bouquet, does she?”

“Yes,” answered Baby Bunty. “She told each one of us to bring wild flowers to school tomorrow. Sammie and Susie Littletail, and Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, and Lulu and Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble—they all know where to look in the woods for the blossoms. But I’m such a little rabbit girl I don’t know. So if you’ll tell me about the flowers, I’ll go pick them before supper, and have them ready for tomorrow.”

“Well,” said Uncle Wiggily, slowly like and disengaged, as he tilted back on his easy chair, “there are red flowers and blue ones, and golden yellow ones, and some of purple. They will make a nice bouquet when you pick them. Now run off in the woods, Baby Bunty, and pick some flowers. Then you’ll have pretty posies for your teacher.”

Uncle Wiggily closed his eyes, gave his pink nose a soft little twinkle and was dozing off again into a little before-supper sleep. Baby Bunty shook her little head.

“This will never do,” she thought. “Uncle Wiggily will get old and stiff, and he’ll think his rheumatism is worse and all things like that if I let him keep so quiet. I must rouse him up. I haven’t time to make him chase me, as I want to gather flowers. What shall I do? Oh, I know!”

Softly Baby Bunty hopped off on her tippy tip-paws. Into the woods, not far from the hollow stump bungalow, she went, and there she saw some red flowers. She began to pick them, looking back, now and then, through the trees to where Uncle Wiggily was asleep against the side of his hollow stump bungalow.

“I must rouse him up and make him more lively!” thought Baby Bunty. Then, all of a sudden, as she was picking pink flowers she gave a little scream and cried:

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily! Come quick! Here’s a big snake after me!”

“What’s that! A snake! A snake after Baby Bunty when she’s picking a flower bouquet for teacher?” cried the rabbit gentleman, suddenly waking up. “That must never be!”

Quickly he sprang from the bark bench on which he had been sitting. Over to the edge of the woods he ran, where Baby Bunty was picking a bouquet.

“Where’s the snake?” asked Uncle Wiggily, all ready to kindly ask the crawly creature to go away and not hurt the little rabbit girl. “Where’s the snake?”

“There!” cried Baby Bunty, pointing to something squirming on the ground.

“That? Why that is only an angle worm!” said Uncle Wiggily with a laugh. “He won’t hurt you, Baby Bunty.”

“Oh! Only an angle worm!” said the little rabbit girl, innocent-like and dissembling. “Why, I thought it was a snake!”

The angle worm crawled away, laughing to himself. Uncle Wiggily went back to sleep and Baby Bunty went on picking her bouquet. She glanced back to where Mr. Longears was having a nap. Then Baby Bunty suddenly cried again:

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily! There’s a big beast in an aeroplane airship flying after me! Come quick and drive him away! Oh! Oh!”

“A big beast in an airship!” exclaimed the rabbit gentleman, suddenly waking up. “Oh, ho! I’ll soon drive him away!” He ran to Baby Bunty.

“There it is!” she said, pointing her paw to something fluttering in the air.

“That? Why, that’s only a dragon fly!” said Uncle Wiggily. “He will never hurt you. All he does is to eat mosquitoes.” And back the bunny went to sleep, while the dragon fly flew on, laughing to himself.

Pretty soon Baby Bunty, who now had some red, white and blue flowers for her bouquet, called:

“Oh, Uncle Wiggily! There’s a big, wild, spotted leopard after me! Come quick!”

Uncle Wiggily jumped up so quickly from his sleep that he upset the bark bench.

“Where’s the spotted leopard?” he cried.

“There!” said Baby Bunty, pointing.

“That! Why, that’s only Billy No-Tail, the spotted frog boy!” said Uncle Wiggily. “He won’t hurt you!”

“Oh!” said Baby Bunty softly, “I thought he was a green and yellow spotted leopard. Well, as long as I have roused you up so often, Uncle Wiggily, don’t you think you’d better stay awake now, and help me pick teacher’s bouquet? It will keep you from getting stiff.”

“I suppose so,” said the rabbit gentleman, sort of sighing resigned like. And as he helped pick the flowers he heard Baby Bunty laugh softly every now and then.

“I wonder,” thought Uncle Wiggily, “if she knew, all the while, that it was only an angle worm, a dragon fly and the frog boy? I wonder?”

And so do I. And if the Thanksgiving Fourth of July pinwheel doesn’t scratch the baby’s rattle box and make it squeak like a tin horn I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Bunty’s hat.

STORY IX UNCLE WIGGILY AND BUNTY’S HAT

Once upon a time Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy promised Baby Bunty, the little rabbit girl, who lived with Uncle Wiggily, to take her down to the fifteen and sixteen cent store to buy a new hat.

But at the last minute Nurse Jane had to go over to help Mrs. Wibblewobble, the duck lady, make sugar cookies.

“I’ll take Baby Bunty to the five and ten cent store myself,” said Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll help her get a new hat.”

“Oh, joy!” cried Baby Bunty. “I love to go shopping with you, Uncle Wiggily. Only we’ll go to the nineteen and twenty cent store. They have lovely hats there! Why, some have grass-colored ribbons and one has real cabbage leaf trimmings.”

“That will be fine!” laughed Uncle Wiggily. “When you are hungry you can eat part of your hat, Bunty.”

“Oh, I’ll never do that!” said the little rabbit girl, who had been found in a hollow stump.

So Nurse Jane went over to Mrs. Wibblewobble’s and Uncle Wiggily started for the three and four cent store—no, I’m wrong—it was the nineteen and twenty. Baby Bunty skipped on ahead, running two and fro, jumping over bushes and snuggling down in clumps of ferns, as though playing hide and seek. Uncle Wiggily went more slowly and rheumatic like.

“Why don’t you jump, as I do?” asked Baby Bunty.

“Oh, my joints are too stiff,” said the bunny rabbit. “I’m getting old, Baby Bunty.”

“Well, then I’ll have to make you lively!” cried the little rabbit girl.

“Oh, please don’t do any more of your tricks!” begged Uncle Wiggily with a laugh. “Just let me hobble along in peace and quietness on my rheumatism crutch. And, Baby Bunty, there is one favor I want to beg of you.”

“What is it?” asked the little rabbit girl as she waved her paw to a spotted lady bug, friendly like.

“Don’t ask me to go in that eleven and twelve cent store with you to get your new hat,” spoke the bunny. “I’ll go as far as the door with you and give you the money. But I’ll wait outside. I never can bear to hop up and down the aisles, from the soap department over to the lace veil counter doing shopping. I’ll wait for you outside.”

“Very well,” said Baby Bunty. “But I think it would do your stiffness good to come in. However, we shall see.”

So Uncle Wiggily hopped on with the lively little rabbit girl, and soon they were at the—nineteen and twenty cent store, I think. You can look back and make sure.

“Now, I’ll wait here for you,” said the rabbit gentleman, sitting down in a sunny place outside. “Take the money and get a new hat Bunty.”

“What’s the matter with your pa? Isn’t he feeling well?” asked a little mousie girl clerk, as she came up to wait on Baby Bunty, and saw the rabbit gentleman staying outside.

“That isn’t my pa—it’s Uncle Wiggily,” said the little shopper. “He’s getting stiff, but I’ll soon make him feel better.”

Then she began to shop around and look at hats, and pretty soon, having tried on one with carrot trimmings, she went to the door and called:

“Uncle Wiggily! Please come in and see if this looks well on me!”

“Oh, my!” groaned Uncle Wiggily. “Must I come in? Well, only this once.”

Slowly he hopped in, looked at Bunty’s hat, and said:

[Illustration: [Uncle Wiggily]]

“Oh, yes. That’s fine. Have it wrapped up and we’ll get home.”