The Most-Beloved Animal Stories in One Volume. Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

looked at the thumb of Little Jack Horner, who was playing marbles with Little Boy Blue.

      “Does your thumb hurt you much, Jack?” asked Uncle Wiggily.

      “Yes, I am sorry to say it does. I’m not going to pull any more plums out of Christmas pies. I’m going to eat cake instead,” said Jack Horner.

      “Well, I’ll go get Dr. Possum for you,” offered Uncle Wiggily. “I think that will be best,” he remarked to Mother Goose.

      Wrapped in his warm fur overcoat, Uncle Wiggily once more started off over the fields and through the woods. He had not gone very far before he heard a queer sort of crying noise, like:

      “Baa! Baa! Baa!”

      “Ha! That sounds like a little lost lamb,” said the bunny uncle, “only there are no little lambs out this time of year. I’ll take a look. It may be some one in trouble, whom I can help.”

      Uncle Wiggily looked around the corner of a stone fence, and there he saw a sheep shivering in the cold, for most of his warm, fleecy wool had been sheared off. Oh! how the sheep shivered in the cold.

      “Why, what is the matter with you?” asked Uncle Wiggily, kindly.

      “I am c-c-c-c-cold,” said the sheep, shiveringly.

      “What makes you cold?” the bunny uncle wanted to know.

      “Because they cut off so much of my wool. You know how it is with me, for I am in the Mother Goose book. Listen!

      “‘Baa-baa, black sheep, have you any wool?

      Yes, sir; yes, sir; three bags full.

      One for the master, one for the man,

      And one for the little boy who lives in the lane.’

      “That’s the way I answered when they asked me if I had any wool,” said Baa-baa.

      “And what did they do?” asked the bunny uncle.

      “Why they sheared off my fleece, three bags of it. I didn’t mind them taking the first bag full, for I had plenty and it was so warm I thought Spring was coming. And it doesn’t hurt to cut off my fleecy wool, any more than it hurts to cut a boy’s hair. And after they took the first bag full of wool for the master they took a second bag for the man. I didn’t mind that, either. But when they took the third——”

      “Then they really did take three?” asked Uncle Wiggily, in surprise.

      “Oh, yes, to be sure. Why it’s that way in the book of Mother Goose, you know, and they had to do just as the book says.”

      “I suppose so,” agreed Uncle Wiggily, sadly like.

      “Well, after they took the third bag of wool off my back the weather grew colder, and I began to shiver. Oh! how cold I was; and how I shivered and shook. Of course if the master and the man, and the little boy who lives in the lane, had known I was going to shiver so, they would not have taken the last bag of wool. Especially the little boy, as he is very kind to me.

      “But now it is done, and it will be a long while before my wool grows out again. And as long as it is cold weather I will shiver, I suppose,” said Baa-baa, the black sheep.

      “No, you shall not shiver!” cried Uncle Wiggily.

      “How can you stop me?” asked the black sheep.

      “By wrapping my old fur coat around you,” said the rabbit gentleman. “I have two fur overcoats, a new one and an old one. I am wearing the new one. The old one is at my hollow-stump bungalow. You go there and tell Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy to give it to you. Tell her I said so. Or you can go there and wait for me, as I am going to get Dr. Possum to fix the thumb of Little Jack Horner, who sat in a corner, eating a Christmas pie.”

      “You are very kind,” said Baa-baa. “I’ll go to your bungalow and wait there for you.”

      So he did, shaking and shivering all the way, but he soon became warm when he sat by Nurse Jane’s fire. And when Uncle Wiggily came back from having sent Dr. Possum to Little Jack Horner, the rabbit gentleman wrapped his old fur coat around Baa-baa, the black sheep, who was soon as warm as toast.

      And Baa-baa wore Uncle Wiggily’s old fur coat until warm weather came, when the sheep’s wool grew out long again. So everything was all right, you see.

      And now, having learned the lesson that if you cut your hair too short you may have to wear a fur cap to stop yourself from getting cold, we will wait for the next story, which, if the pencil box doesn’t jump into the ink well and get a pail of glue to make the lollypop stick fast to the roller-skates, will be about Uncle Wiggily and Polly Flinders.

CHAPTER XXIV

      UNCLE WIGGILY AND POLLY FLINDERS

       Table of Contents

      “There!” cried Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper, who took care of the hollow-stump bungalow for Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman. “There, it is all finished at last!”

      “What’s all finished?” asked the bunny uncle, who was reading the paper in his easy chair near the fire, for the weather was still cold. “I hope you don’t mean you have finished living with me, Nurse Jane? For I would be very lonesome if you were to go away.”

      “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll not leave you, Wiggy,” she said. “What I meant was that I had finished making the new dress for Susie Littletail, the rabbit girl.”

      “Good!” cried the bunny uncle. “A new dress for my little niece Susie. That’s fine! If you like, Nurse Jane, I’ll take it to her.”

      “I wish you would,” spoke the muskrat lady. “I have not time myself. Just be careful of it. Don’t let the bad fox or the skillery-scalery alligator with humps on his ears bite holes in it.”

      “I won’t,” promised Uncle Wiggily. So taking the dress, which Nurse Jane had sewed for Susie, over his paw, and with his tall silk hat over his ears, and carrying his red, white and blue striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch, off Uncle Wiggily started for the Littletail home.

      “Susie will surely like her dress,” thought the rabbit gentleman. “It has such pretty colors.” For it had, being pink and blue and red and yellow and purple and lavender and strawberry and lemon and Orange Mountain colors. There may have been other colors in it, but I can think of no more right away.

      Uncle Wiggily was going along past Old Mother Hubbard’s house, and past the place where Mother Goose lived, when, coming to a place near a big tree, Uncle Wiggily saw another house. And from inside the house came a crying sound.

      “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What shall I do?” sobbed a voice.

      “Ah, ha! More trouble!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I seem to be finding lots of people in trouble lately. Well, now to see who this is!”

      Going up to the house, and peering in a window, Uncle Wiggily saw a little girl sitting before a fireplace. And this little girl was crying.

      “Hello!” called Uncle Wiggily, in his jolly voice, as he opened the window. “What is the matter? Are you Little Bo Peep, and are you crying because you have lost your sheep?”

      “No, Uncle Wiggily,” answered the little girl. “I am crying because I have spoiled my nice new dress, and when my mother comes home and finds it out she will whip me.”

      “Oh, no!” cried the bunny uncle. “Your mother will never do that. But who are you?”

      “Why, don’t you know? I am little Polly Flinders, I sat among the cinders, warming my pretty little toes. ‘And her mother came and caught her, and she whipped her little daughter, for spoiling her nice new clothes.’