Well, I wish you could have seen the face Uncle Wiggily made when he swallowed the rheumatism medicine!  It was just like a clown in the circus, only funnier.  But Brighteyes and Buddy didn’t even giggle, which was very kind of them.

“Do you feel any better?” asked Dr. Pigg, after Uncle Wiggily had stopped making faces.  “Is the pain gone?”

“No, I can’t say that it is,” answered the rabbit.  “It seems to be worse than ever,” and he rubbed his leg and tried to get up, but he couldn’t leave the chair, even with his crutch, which Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy had gnawed for him out of a cornstalk.

“Oh, that’s too bad!” exclaimed Dr. Pigg.  “I must try a new kind of medicine.”

“No, don’t!” cried the rabbit.  “I had rather have the rheumatism.”

“Suppose we try some horse radish leaves, like we did for my toothache?” proposed Buddy, and Mrs. Pigg said that would be good.  So they got some leaves, and put them on Uncle Wiggily’s leg, but they didn’t do any good, neither did mustard, nor nettles, nor any of the other burning things that they tried.

“Oh, dear, I guess I’ll have to stay in this chair forever!” cried Uncle Wiggily, as he tried to get up and couldn’t.  “Oh, dear me, and a piece of chewing gum!  This is terrible!”

Well, every one was wondering how Uncle Wiggily was ever going to walk again, when all of a sudden, as Buddy looked from the window, he cried out: 

“Oh, here comes the big, shaggy yellow dog that was going to eat up Brighteyes and Sister Sallie when they were playing with their dolls!  He’s coming right this way!  Run everybody!”

“Wow!” cried Uncle Wiggily.  “A dog!  Goodness me!” and, land sakes, if he didn’t jump up, seize his crutch and run home as fast as if he never had any rheumatism at all.

You see he was so frightened he forgot all about it for the time being, which was a good thing.  But do you s’pose that dog dared to come in the pen and hurt the guinea pigs?  No, sir, not a bit of it!  The first he knew, Percival, the kind, old circus dog had him by the ear and the bad dog ran away and didn’t hurt anybody.

Now, in the next story, if an auto horn doesn’t scare me so that I lose my typewriter ribbon I’ll tell you about Buddy Pigg being caught by a boy.

STORY VII

BUDDY PIGG IS CAUGHT

Buddy Pigg was sent to the store by his mother, one fine summer day, to get a pound of butter, a loaf of bread and three-and-a-half pounds of granulated sugar, and as that made quite a load to carry Buddy had a basket to put the things in.

“Now don’t drop the loaf of bread in the water,” said his mamma, “and don’t let the butter melt and, above all, don’t tear a hole in the bag of sugar, and have it spill out.”

“I won’t, mother,” promised Buddy.  “I’ll be real careful.”  So he set out on his journey to the store, while Brighteyes, his sister, stayed home to make the beds and mend the stockings.