Uncle Wiggily and Baby Bunty

“Ouch! Oh, dear! My! My!”

That was what Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy heard one day in the hollow stump bungalow. She was just getting breakfast for Uncle Wiggily Longears, the bunny gentleman.

“My goodness me sakes alive and a basket of potato chips!” cried Nurse Jane, accidentally dropping a stewed carrot into the turnip marmalade. “I hope the Skeezicks, or the Pipsisewah or the Skuddlemagoon hasn’t caught Mr. Longears!”

She looked in the dining room. The uncle bunny had just come downstairs to his breakfast.

“Ouch! Oh, me! Oh, my!” groaned Uncle Wiggily as he sat down in his chair, which was gnawed out of a grape vine root.

“Why, no one is biting him,” said Nurse Jane, as she looked all around. “Whatever in the world is the matter, Wiggy?” she asked, bringing in his breakfast turnip.

“Oh, I’m getting old, I guess,” he answered. “My joints are stiff, and it isn’t all rheumatism, either. I can’t move around as spry as I’d like to. Every time I bend over, or stoop, or try to hurry I get aches and pains and——”

“Oh, nonsense!” laughed Nurse Jane. “You only imagine it. You’re as young as ever! What you need is some one lively around the house. Some one to chase you, to tag you and make you spry. I can’t do it, because I have the housework to look after. But if you could get some bright, frisky, lively little chap—why, you’d be a different rabbit.”

“I s’pose I would,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Do you mean to get Johnnie or Billie Bushytail, one of the squirrel boys? They’re lively enough.”

“Yes, they’re lively enough,” said Nurse Jane, “but they have to frisk around their own home nest. You want some one to stay here with you a long time.”

“All right,” said Uncle Wiggily, sad like and not very hopeful. “After breakfast I’ll go to the five and six cent store and see if I can get a lively little chap to cheer me up.”

“You won’t find any at the five and six, nor even at the ten and eleven cent store,” said Nurse Jane. “True, the little mousie girl clerks are lively enough, but they have to work. You need a—well, a sort of companion. I’m getting too old for you.”

“Nonsense!” scoffed Uncle Wiggily.

But, as he hopped over the fields and through the woods after breakfast the more he thought of what Nurse Jane had said the more he knew she was right.

“I need some one lively to make me jump around,” thought the bunny. “If only I could get a——”

Just then he heard a little voice calling:

“Let me out! Let me out.”

“Ha! Where does that voice come from?” asked the bunny. “Where are you, whoever you are?”

“In this hollow stump, right behind you!” answered the voice. “Oh, I hate being cooped up here! I want to get out and jump around and chase my shadow and jump over moonbeams and all things like that.”

“Are you—are you a fairy?” asked Uncle Wiggily sort of hopeful like. “If I help you out of the hollow stump, could you make me feel younger and more lively?”

“Of course I could; but I’m not a fairy,” was the answer, given with a jolly laugh.

“You must be a fairy or else you couldn’t take away my old-age aches and pains,” said the bunny. “Well, as long as you aren’t the skillery-scalery alligator, or the Pipsisewah, I’ll let you out. But how did you get in?”

“Let me out and I’ll tell you,” said the voice.

The hollow stump was partly filled with old dried leaves, broken sticks and bits of bark. Uncle Wiggily scraped all this away with his paws, and out popped the dearest little girl rabbit you ever saw.

“Oh, who are you?” asked Uncle Wiggily in surprise.

“I am Baby Bunty,” was the answer. “I was going through the woods with my papa and mamma a while ago, but a bad fox caught them, and I was left all alone. So I hid in the hollow stump, the birds piled leaves and bits of bark over me to cover me, but when it rained it was packed down so hard that I couldn’t get out. So I had to cry for help.”

“Well, I’m glad I helped you,” said the bunny. “But how are you going to make me feel young again——”

“Tag! You’re it!” suddenly cried Baby Bunty, tapping Uncle Wiggily with her paw. “Now you have to chase me!” and away she hopped through the woods.

“My goodness! If she goes along like that, all alone, the fox will catch her!” said Uncle Wiggily. “I’ll have to run after her! But my aches—my pains—oh dear!”

Away hopped the rabbit gentleman, after Baby Bunty. She ran fast and so did Uncle Wiggily, and when they reached his hollow stump bungalow he was so warm and excited and so anxious about Baby Bunty—why, he wasn’t lame or stiff a bit! Can you imagine?

“I told you so!” laughed Nurse Jane, when she saw the baby rabbit, which Mr. Longears said he would keep in his bungalow. “Now that you have some one young around you’ll get younger yourself.”

And Mr. Longears did. And if the top of the house doesn’t go down cellar to see why the laundry tubs can’t wash the coal white, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Bunty’s skates.