“Well, my valise is down a hole,” said Uncle Wiggily, “but I don’t see how you can get it up.  I need it, though.”

“I can fly down, tie the string to the satchel and you can pull it up,” said the birdie.  And she did so, and the rabbit pulled up his valise as nicely as a bucket of water is hoisted up from the well.  Then some bad boys and a man came along to see if there was anything in the hole-trap, or the string-trap they had made; but when they saw the bird flying away and the rabbit hopping away through the woods they were very angry.  But Uncle Wiggily and the yellow bird were safe from harm, I’m glad to say.

And the rabbit had another adventure soon after that, and what it was I’ll tell you soon, when the story will be about Uncle Wiggily and the skyrockets.  It will be a Fourth of July story, if you please; that is if the bean bag doesn’t fall down the coal hole and catch a mosquito.

STORY V

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE SKY-CRACKER

Let me see, I think I promised to tell you a story about Uncle Wiggily and the skyrocket, didn’t I?  Or was it to be about a firecracker, seeing that it soon may be the Fourth of July?  What’s that—­a firecracker—­no?  A skyrocket?  Oh, I’m all puzzled up about it, so I guess I’ll make it a sky-cracker, a sort of half-firecracker and half-skyrocket, and that will do.

Well, after Uncle Wiggily had gotten the little yellow bird, that looked like gold, out from the string-trap in the tree, the old gentleman rabbit spent two nights visiting a second cousin of Grandfather Prickly Porcupine, who lived in the woods.  Then Uncle Wiggily got up one morning, dressed himself very carefully, combed out his whiskers, and said: 

“Well, I’m off again to seek my fortune.”

“It’s too bad you can’t seem able to find it,” said the second cousin to Grandfather Prickly Porcupine, “but perhaps you will have good luck to-day.  Only you want to be very careful.”

“Why?” asked the old gentleman rabbit.

“Well, because you know it will soon be the Fourth of July, and some boys may tie a firecracker or a skyrocket to your tail,” said the porcupine.

“Ha!  Ha!” laughed Uncle Wiggily.  “They will have a hard time doing that, for my tail is so short that the boys would burn their fingers if they tried to tie a firecracker to it.”

“Then look out that they don’t fasten a skyrocket to your long ears,” said the second cousin to Grandfather Prickly Porcupine, as he wrapped up some lettuce and carrot sandwiches for Uncle Wiggily to take with him.

The old gentleman rabbit said he would watch out, and away he started, going up hill and down hill with his barber-pole crutch as easily as if he was being wheeled in a baby carriage.

“Well, I don’t seem to find any fortune,” he said to himself as he walked along, and, just as he said that he saw something sparkling in the grass beside the path in the woods.  “What’s that?” he cried.  “Perhaps it is a diamond.  If it is I can sell it and get rich.”  Then he happened to think what the second cousin of Grandfather Prickly Porcupine had told him about Fourth of July coming, and Uncle Wiggily said: