“Oh, my!” cried Mrs. Goat, when she heard that.  “Get a gun, and shoot him, Mr. Goat.”

And at that Billie and Nannie began to cry, for they were afraid of burglars, and Uncle Butter got up, and began looking for a whistle, with which to call a policeman dog, but he couldn’t find it.

Then the burglar-fox started in breaking down the door, so that he could get in, and still Mr. Goat couldn’t find his gun.

“Oh, we’ll all be killed!” cried Mrs. Goat.  “Oh, if some one would only help us!”

“Ha!  I will help you!” cried Uncle Wiggily jumping out of bed.  “I’ll scare that fox so that he’ll run away.”

“But I can’t find my gun,” said Mr. Goat.

“No matter,” answered the brave rabbit.  “I can scare him with a paper lantern such as Nannie can make.  Quick, Nannie, make me a big paper lantern.”

Well, the little goat girl stopped crying then, and she got her paper, and her scissors, and the paste pot, and she began to make a paper lantern, as big as a water pail.  Uncle Wiggily and Billie helped her.  And all the while the burglar-fox was banging on the door, and crying out: 

“Let me in!  Let me in!”

“Quick! is the lantern ready?” Asked Uncle Wiggily, jumping around in a circle like “Ring Around the Rosie.”

“Here it is,” said Nannie.  So the rabbit gentleman took it, all nicely made as it was, and inside of it he put a hot, blazing candle.  And the lantern was so big that the candle didn’t burn the sides of the paper.

Then Uncle Wiggily tied the lantern to a string, and he lowered it right down out of the window; down in front of the burglar-fox, and the hot candle in the lantern burned the fox’s nose, and he thought it was a policeman climbing down out of a tree to catch him, and before you could count forty-’leven the bad burglar-fox ran away, and so he didn’t rob the goats after all.  And, oh! how thankful Nannie and Billie and their papa and mamma were to Uncle Wiggily.

Now, in case the little boy next door doesn’t take our clothes line, to make a swing for his puppy dog, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the paper house in the following story.

STORY XX

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE PAPER HOUSE

Bright and early next morning Uncle Wiggily got up, and he took a careful look around to see if there were any signs of the burglar-fox, about whom I told you in another story.

“I guess he’s far enough off by this time,” said Billie Goat, as he polished his horns with a green leaf.

“Yes, indeed,” spoke Uncle Wiggily.  “It is a good thing that Nannie knew how to make a paper lantern.”

“Oh, I can make lots of things out of paper,” said the little goat girl.  “Our teacher in school shows us how.  Why I can even make a paper house.”

“Can you, indeed?” asked the old gentleman rabbit, as he washed his paws and face for breakfast.  “Now I should dearly like to know how to make a paper house.”