Uncle Wiggily and Baby Bunty

Uncle Wiggily Longears, the bunny rabbit gentleman, was hopping along through Woodland near the Orange Ice Mountains, not far from Asbury Grove, where he had built his hollow stump bungalow. Mr. Longears was looking first on one side of the path and then on the other with his pink, twinkling nose.

I mean Uncle Wiggily had his pink nose with him; I don’t mean he was looking with it. Gracious, no! He looked with his eyes.

“Hello, Uncle Wiggily! Are you looking for an adventure?” asked Johnnie Bushytail, the squirrel boy, as he scampered up a hickory tree to see if any nuts were growing yet. But it was too early.

“No, I’m not exactly looking for an adventure,” spoke the bunny gentleman. “I want to find Baby Bunty, the little rabbit girl who used to live in a hollow stump.”

“Do you want her to chase you and play tag?” asked Johnnie.

“Indeed, I do not!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Baby Bunty is too lively for me! She says she makes me chase her so I won’t get old and stiff. But it’s fun to be sort of restful like once in a while. Now I’m looking for Baby Bunty because Nurse Jane wants her to come and have her paws and face washed for supper. Have you seen her?”

“Do you mean Nurse Jane or Baby Bunty?” asked the squirrel boy, sort of joking like and comical.

“Baby Bunty, of course!” answered Uncle Wiggily. “I know where Nurse Jane is. She’s baking a strawberry long-cake in my hollow stump bungalow. But if you haven’t seen Baby Bunty I must hop along and look in other places.”

So Uncle Wiggily hopped along, and pretty soon he came to the shore of a large pond. On one bank of the pond were growing a number of tall plants, with thick, green leaves.

“Ha! Those are nice plants,” said Uncle Wiggily. “Perhaps they may have seen Baby Bunty pass this way.”

So, understanding the language of flowers, which is about the same as that which is talked by the leaves and vines, Uncle Wiggily asked the green plants if they had seen the little rabbit girl.

“No,” answered one large plant, “we haven’t seen Baby Bunty. We have been so busy trying to shake off a lot of bad, red, biting bugs, on our stalks and leaves, that we haven’t had a chance to look for any one. We wish we could drive the bugs away.”

“I can do that,” kindly offered Uncle Wiggily. “I will drive away the red bugs that are biting your thick, green, glossy leaves. I’ll knock them off with my red, white and blue striped rheumatism crutch.”

“Please do!” begged the plants growing on the edge of the big pond.

So Uncle Wiggily drove away the biting bugs by tapping on the green, thick-leaved plants with his crutch, and the plants thanked the rabbit gentleman very much.

“If we can ever do you or any of your friends a favor we shall be glad to,” they said.

Uncle Wiggily hardly thought a plant could ever do you a favor, but just you wait and see. On and on through the woods hopped the rabbit gentleman, until pretty soon he came to a cute little shady dingly dell, and there was Baby Bunty lying on the grass fast asleep. In one paw was her wooden doll—Sarah Jane Sassafras Ricepudding.

“Oh, Bunty! Wake up!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “Nurse Jane wants you to come home! It’s nearly supper time!”

Baby Bunty awakened with a start, rubbed her eyes, and then, holding her doll, Matilda Arabella Flapdoodle, in one paw, the little rabbit girl took hold of Uncle Wiggily’s coat tail and back to the hollow stump bungalow they started.

They had not gone very far, and they were hopping toward the big pond of water, when, all of a sudden, out from behind a stump popped the bad old Skuddlemagoon.

“Oh, ho! Now I have you!” cried the Skuddlemagoon.

Uncle Wiggily and Baby Bunty ran as fast as they could. So did the Skuddlemagoon. Pretty soon Uncle Wiggily and Baby Bunty came to the big pond.

“Oh, if only this pond were little now,” sighed Uncle Wiggily, “we could jump across it.”

“What good would that do?” asked Baby Bunty.

“Why, once on the other side, we would be safe from the Skuddlemagoon,” answered Uncle Wiggily. “The policeman dog lives on the other side of this pond. But, as it is now, it is too big for us to jump across, and if we have to run all the way around it the bad chap may catch us.”

And then, just as true as I’m telling you, all of a sudden the big pond began to shrink up. It shut its banks close together and became so little that Uncle Wiggily and Baby Bunty could easily jump across without getting wet.

All the way across the pond they jumped, and, when they were safe on the other side, the little pond suddenly stretched into a big one again and it was so large that the Skuddlemagoon couldn’t jump over.

“Oh, we’re safe, Uncle Wiggily!” cried Bunty. “We’re safe! But what made the big pond get little and then grow big again?”

“I don’t know,” answered Mr. Longears.

Then some voices spoke: “We made the big pond get little for you,” said the green stalks and leaves on the bank. “We shrank and also stretched the pond for you. We are rubber plants, you know, and rubber can stretch and shrink.”

That’s just how it happened. Weren’t those stretchy rubber plants good to Baby Bunty and Mr. Longears? And if the bluebell flower doesn’t ring so late in the morning that the alarm clock gets late for school, and can’t have any sawdust candy for recess, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and the funny stump.