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

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      Sat in a corner,

      Eating a Christmas pie.

      He put in his thumb,

      And pulled out a plum,

      And said what a great boy am I.

      “That’s the boy I mean,” cried Mother Goose. “But the trouble is that Jack can’t get his thumb out. He put it in the pie, to pull out the plum, but it won’t come out—neither the plum nor the thumb. They are stuck fast for some reason or other. I wish you’d go for Dr. Possum, so he can help us.”

      “I will,” said Uncle Wiggily. “But is Jack Horner sitting in a corner, as it says in the book?”

      “Oh, he’s doing that all right,” answered Mother Goose. “But, corner or no corner, he can’t pull out his thumb.”

      “I’ll get the doctor at once,” promised the bunny uncle. He hurried over to Dr. Possum’s house, but could not find him, as Dr. Possum was, just then, called to see Jillie Longtail, who had the mouse-trap fever.

      “Dr. Possum not in!” cried Mother Goose, when Uncle Wiggily had hopped back and told her. “That’s too bad! Oh, we must do something for Jack. He’s crying and going on terribly because he can’t get his thumb out.”

      Uncle Wiggily thought for a minute. Then, putting his paw in his pocket, he felt the button-hook which had dropped from the automobile that nearly ran over him.

      “Ha! I know what to do!” cried the bunny uncle, suddenly.

      “What?” asked Mother Goose.

      “I’ll pull out Jack’s thumb myself, with this button-hook,” said Mr. Longears. “I’ll make him all right without waiting for Dr. Possum.”

      Into the room, where, in the corner, Jack was sitting, went the bunny gentleman. There he saw the Christmas-pie boy, with his thumb away down deep under the top crust.

      “Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” cried Jack. “I’m in such trouble. Oh, dear! I can’t get my thumb out. It must be caught on the edge of the pan, or something!”

      “Don’t cry,” said Uncle Wiggily, kindly. “I’ll get it out for you.”

Uncle Wiggily tips his hat to Mother Hubbard.

      “I wish you’d go for Dr. Possum.”

      So he put the button-hook through the hole in the top pie crust, close to Jack’s thumb. Then, getting the hook on the plum, Uncle Wiggily, with his strong paws, pulled and pulled and pulled, and——

      All of a sudden out came the plum and Jack Homer’s thumb, and they weren’t stuck fast any more.

      “Oh, thank you, so much!” said Jack, as he got up out of his corner.

      “Pray don’t mention it,” spoke Uncle Wiggily, politely. “I am glad I could help you, and it also makes an adventure for me.”

      Then Jack Horner, went back to his corner and ate the plum that stuck to his thumb. And Uncle Wiggily, putting the button-hook back in his pocket, went on to his hollow-stump bungalow. He had had his adventure.

      So everything came out all right, you see, and if the snow-shovel doesn’t go off by itself, sliding down hill with the ash can, when it ought to be boiling the cups and saucers for supper, I’ll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and Mr. Pop-Goes.

      UNCLE WIGGILY AND MR. POP-GOES

       Table of Contents

      “Uncle Wiggily,” said Mrs. Littletail, the rabbit lady, one morning, as she came in the dining-room where Mr. Longears was reading the cabbage leaf paper after breakfast, “Uncle Wiggily, I don’t like you to go out in such a storm as this, but I do need some things from the store, and I have no one to send.”

      “Why, I’ll be only too glad to go,” cried the bunny uncle, who was spending a few days visiting the Littletail family in their underground burrow-house. “It isn’t snowing very hard,” and he looked out through the window, which was up a little way above ground to make the burrow light. “What do you want, Mrs. Littletail?” he asked.

      “Oh, I want a loaf of bread and some sugar,” said the bunny mother of Sammie and Susie Littletail.

      “And you shall certainly have what you want!” cried Uncle Wiggily, as he got ready to go to the store. Soon he was on his way, wearing his fur coat, and hopping along on his corn-stalk rheumatism crutch, while his pink nose was twinkling in the frosty air like a red lantern on the back of an automobile.

      “A loaf of home-made bread and three and a half pounds of granulated sugar,” said Uncle Wiggily to the monkey-doodle gentleman who kept the grocery store. “And the best that you have, if you please, as it’s for Mrs. Littletail.”

      “You shall certainly have the best!” cried the monkey-doodle gentleman, with a jolly laugh. And while he was wrapping up the things for Uncle Wiggily to carry home, all at once there sounded in the store a loud:

      “Pop!”

      “My! What’s that?” asked Uncle Wiggily, surprised like and excited. “I heard a bang like a gun. Are there any hunter-men, with their dogs about? If there are I must be careful.”

      “No, that wasn’t a gun,” said the monkey-doodle gentleman. “That was only one of the toy balloons in my window. I had some left over from last year, so I blew them up and put them in my window to make it look pretty. Now and then one of them bursts.” And just then, surely enough, “Pop! Bang!” went another toy balloon, bursting and shriveling all up.

      Uncle Wiggily looked in the front window of the store and saw some blown-up balloons that had not burst.

      “I’ll take two of those,” he said to the monkey-doodle gentleman. “Sammie and Susie Littletail will like to play with them.”

      “Better take two or three,” said the monkey-doodle gentleman. “I’ll let you have them cheap, as they are old balloons, and they will burst easily.”

      So he let the air out of four balloons and gave them to Uncle Wiggily to take home to the bunny children.

      The rabbit gentleman started off through the snow-storm toward the underground house, but he had not gone very far before, just as he was coming out from behind a big stump, he heard voices talking.

      “Now, I’ll tell you how we can get those rabbits,” Uncle Wiggily heard one voice say. “I’ll crawl down in the burrow, and as soon as they see me they’ll be scared and run out—Uncle Wiggily, Mrs. Littletail, the two children, Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy and all. Then you can grab them, Mr. Bigtail! I am glad I happened to meet you!”

      “Ah, ha!” thought Uncle Wiggily. “Mr. Bigtail! I ought to know that name. It’s the fox, and he and some one else seem to be after us rabbits. But I thought the fox promised to be good and let me alone. He must have changed his mind.”

      Uncle Wiggily peeked cautiously around the stump, taking care to make no noise, and there he saw a fox and another animal talking. And the rabbit gentleman saw that it was not the fox who had promised to be good, but another one, of the same name, who was bad.

      “Yes, I’ll go down the hole and drive out the rabbits and you can grab them,” said the queer animal.

      “That’s good,” growled the fox, “but to whom have I the honor of speaking?” That was his way of asking the name of the other animal, you see.

      “Oh, I’m called Mr. Pop-Goes,” said the other.

      “Mr. Pop-Goes! What a queer name,” said

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