Well, that boy opened his mouth real wide to laugh at the funny story and his mamma all of a sudden slipped a string around the aching tooth and she pulled it out in a moment, and it never ached again.

“Oh, how glad I am!” cried the little boy.  “I wish you would always stay with me, Uncle Wiggily—­you and the jolly cricket.”

“I’d like to, but I can’t,” said the old gentleman rabbit.  “I must keep on after my fortune.”

“I’ll stay with you for a little while,” said the cricket, and he did, telling some funny stories to other boys who had the toothache, and right away after that they allowed their bad teeth to be pulled, and their pain was over.

So Uncle Wiggily said good-by to the cricket and went on by himself.  He was feeling very good now, for he and the cricket had met a kind muskrat, a thirty-fifth cousin to Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy, and this muskrat gave Uncle Wiggily a lot of sandwiches for his satchel, so he wouldn’t be hungry again for some time.

“And I don’t mind so much about the cent, either,” thought the rabbit, as he remembered the one that belonged to the chipmunk.  “After all a cent is not so much, and I need more than that for my fortune.  Ha!  Ha!  Ho!  Ho!”

He just had to laugh, you see, when he thought of the jolly cricket.  So he traveled on and on, over hill and dale, until one evening, just as the sun was going down behind the clouds, all red and golden and violet colored, he saw a little house built of green leaves.

“Ha!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily.  “That is a very fine house.  I wish I had one like it in which to stay to-night.  But it’s too small for me.  I guess I’ll have to keep on and look for a haystack under which to crawl.”

Well, just as he said that, all of a sudden there was a little rustling, scratching noise, and a bug came to the door of the queer little green leaf house.  The bug had a broom and she began sweeping off the front porch and then she knocked the dirt out of the doormat, and then she swept some cobwebs off the shutters and then she hurried out and swept off the sidewalk, all so quickly that you could scarcely see her move.

“My, but she is a fast worker,” said Uncle Wiggily.  “She is almost as quick as Jennie Chipmunk.”

“I have to be!” exclaimed the bug, for the old gentleman rabbit had spoken out loud without thinking, and the bug had heard him.  “I have to hustle around,” she said, “for I am the busy bug, and I have to keep busy.  I work from morning to night to keep my house in order.  Now excuse me; I have to go in and dust the piano,” and she was just going to run in the house, when Uncle Wiggily said: 

“Do you happen to know of a place where I can stay to-night?”

“Why, yes,” said the busy bug.  “Next door is a house where Mr. Groundhog used to live.  But now he is away on his vacation, and I have the keys.  I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you staying in there over night.  I’ll get it in order for you.  Come along, hurry up, no time to lose!”