Well, in a little while, not so very long, the rabbit and the cricket came to a dark place in the woods.  Oh! it was quite dismal, and, just as they passed a big, black stump with a hole in it, all of a sudden out popped the skillery-scalery-tailery alligator.

“Ah, ha!” exclaimed the unpleasant creature.  “Now I have you both.  I’m going to eat you both, first you, Mr. Cricket, and then you, Uncle Wiggily.”

“Oh, please don’t,” begged the rabbit.  “I haven’t found my fortune yet.”

“No matter,” cried the alligator, “here we go!”

He made a grab for the cricket, but the little black insect hopped to one side, and then, all of a sudden he began to laugh.  Oh, how hard he laughed.

“Ha!  Ha!  Ho!  Ho!  He!  He!” My, it was wonderful!  At first the alligator didn’t know what to make of it.  Harder and harder did the black cricket laugh, and then Uncle Wiggily began.  He just couldn’t help it.  Harder and harder laughed the cricket and Uncle Wiggily together, and then, all at once, the alligator began to laugh.  He couldn’t help it either.

“Ha!  Ha!  Ho!  Ho!  He!  He!” laughed the ’gator, and great big alligator tears rolled down his scaly cheeks, he laughed so hard.  Why, he giggled so that he couldn’t even have eaten a mosquito with mustard on.

“Come on, now!” suddenly cried the cricket to Uncle Wiggily.  “Now is our chance to get away.”

And before the alligator had stopped laughing they both hopped away in the woods together, and so the bad scalery-ailery-tailery creature didn’t get either of them.

“My! it’s a good thing you made him laugh,” said the rabbit when they were safely away.

“It’s a good thing to make anybody laugh,” said the black cricket, and then he and Uncle Wiggily went on to seek the old gentleman rabbit’s fortune.

And in the next story, in case the sunshine doesn’t make my pussy cat sneeze and spill his milk, on the new door mat, I’ll tell you all about Uncle Wiggily and the busy bug.

STORY XI

UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE BUSY BUG

Everywhere Uncle Wiggily and the black cricket went in the next few days, every one was glad to see them.  For they were both so jolly, and laughed and joked so much along the road, that no one who heard them could be sad.

They came to one place where there was a boy sick with the toothache, and his mamma had done everything for him that she could think of, even to putting mustard on it, but still that boy’s tooth ached.

Well, as soon as that boy saw the cricket and the old gentleman rabbit, and heard them laugh, why the boy smiled, and then the pain, somehow, seemed to be better, and he smiled some more, and then he laughed.

Then Uncle Wiggily told a funny story about a monkey who made faces at himself in a looking-glass, and got so excited about it that he jumped around behind the glass, thinking another monkey was there, and there wasn’t, and the monkey fell into the freezer full of ice cream and caught cold because he ate so much of it.